Resistant Staph Struck Rapidly

Teacher Died Within Days of First Pains

The 30th of November unfolded as a typical Friday for Merry King. She spent the day teaching special-needs children at Herbert Hoover Middle School in affluent Potomac, then went home and planned for a weekend trip to New York to visit her daughter and see Manhattan decked out in holiday splendor.

Four days later, King slipped into a coma from which she would not recover.

Her death on Sunday revived fears about the spread of drug-resistant Staphylococcus bacteria in schools, which transfixed the D.C. area after the staph-related death in October of a high school football player in Virginia.

There is no reason to suspect King was infected at school, according to health officials, and the risk to students and teachers on campus appears to be minute. Nonetheless, parents say they are haunted by the sudden and swift demise of a teacher who was, up to the end of last month, a seemingly healthy woman of 48.

"God forbid I send them to school and something happens. I would not be able to live with myself," said Kim McIntyre, mother of two Hoover students. She kept them both home yesterday. She wasn't sure when they would return.

King is one of 43 students and employees at 31 Montgomery schools who have been diagnosed with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, since summer. All but four have fully recovered, said Brian Edwards, chief of staff to Superintendent Jerry D. Weast.

The school system began tabulating cases in October. It has reported more cases than other school systems in the Washington region, although officials stressed that the reports are piecemeal and unofficial. MRSA is not automatically reported to the government.

At least 32 people died in Maryland of MRSA in 2006, said John Hammond, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. That count, based on a review of death certificates, is also unofficial and incomplete.

Circumstances suggest that King's students and the rest of the Hoover population have no greater chance of contracting MRSA "than you or I have, walking around," said Mary Anderson, spokeswoman for the county health department. Nonetheless, school officials took the precaution of sanitizing King's classroom and common areas at the school.

Principal Billie-Jean Bensen said attendance was normal yesterday within the 26-student program where King worked and at the school as a whole.

"I think we're fortunate that it was a teacher who . . . worked in a contained environment," said Jim Schleckser, father of a seventh-grade student at Hoover.

King, of Silver Spring, canceled the New York trip and went to see a doctor Dec. 1 because of abdominal pains, said her daughter, Charlotte Oliver, 27. The doctor thought it might be ovarian cysts. King was given pain pills and sent home.

By Dec. 3, pain had spread throughout her body. The next morning, King drove herself back to the doctor and parked sloppily outside the HMO office. Oliver believes someone at the facility drove her mother to Holy Cross Hospital, where she slipped into a coma.

Doctors found no wound or sore on her body that might have been a source of infection, Oliver said.

It took hospital workers three days to track down Oliver, a computer network administrator in New York, from her mother's outdated contact information. Bensen didn't learn that King was sick until Saturday. Parents were informed of her death on Monday.

King was born in Appleton, Wis., and was an overachiever who joined the all-male cross-country team in high school. After graduation, she enlisted in the Army and was trained as a Russian linguist. She finished second in her class at language school.

She married a fellow military linguist and moved to Japan, where her only child was born. The couple divorced, and King moved to Silver Spring. She trained to be a teacher and went to work at a private school for students with severe behavioral problems.

"She had her nose broken by a student once," Oliver recalled. "She was a tough lady. Just 5-foot-2."

King went to work for the public school system three years ago. At Hoover, she taught science in a program for special-needs students.

Quiet and reserved, King "would be so amazed" at all the attention her passing has drawn, Oliver said.