Long before hospital worker Tacuma Jawara made headlines over accusations he stole rings from a dead woman, Grady Memorial Hospital knew it had a problem.

Valuables belonging to patients, including jewelry and watches, had been disappearing for years, prompting Grady in 2006 to tighten its policy about the handling of patients' valuables, hospital attorney Timothy Jefferson said.

But property continued to vanish.

So when the interim chief executive officer, Pam Stephenson, took over in February, Jefferson told her about the situation.

Before anything was done, Atlanta police arrested Jawara, then a social-services representative, on charges that he stole jewelry from two emergency room patients in April, both of whom were flown to the downtown Atlanta hospital with life-threatening injuries.

In a troubling statement to detectives, Jawara said he wasn't the only one who stole from patients on death's door, police said. Whether that's true or not, it's clear that thefts at the state's largest and busiest hospital are not isolated to the two victims whose stories came to light in May: Police reports obtained through an Open Records Act request show that numerous patients have come to Grady for medical care since January 2007 and have left wondering what happened to their valuables or money.

"It's got to be clearly 180 degrees from what we expect in an institution of care and shelter," said Atlanta attorney Mark Spix, who says he represented a man whose wife lost an engagement ring after being flown to Grady in October 2004 with fatal injuries. "I just think that is unacceptable."

There were 260 thefts involving patients, employees and visitors in 2007, compared with 262 in 2006 and 279 in 2005, Grady spokeswoman Denise Simpson said.

The hospital can't say how many of those involve thefts from patients, and Atlanta police reports regarding thefts at Grady, obtained through the Open Records Act request, don't always state whether victims are patients, employees or visitors.

But the police reports do describe what type of property is disappearing: jewelry, watches, cash, money orders and cellphones, to name a few.

The public got a glimpse of the problem in May, when Jawara was charged with stealing wedding and engagement rings from a fatally injured woman, Katherine Armstrong, on April 30 after she was airlifted to Grady.

That investigation led police to a gold chain and wedding ring belonging to Ron Goyette, who was brought to Grady after a serious car accident on April 21.

Stephenson acknowledges that thefts from patients at Grady are a problem that needs to be dealt with.

"They are our customers. It is our job to protect them," Stephenson said. "When that's violated, we have not done our job."

Stephenson said she and other hospital officials are, once again, changing Grady's security policy regarding patients' valuables. Patient property will go directly from nurses to security officials, removing the middle man that was once Jawara and his fellow social-service representatives.

Jawara, 54, is originally from Chicago and once went by the name Herbert McGuire Jr., but he changed his name for "cultural reasons," according to his personnel file at Grady, reviewed by an Open Records Act request.

He landed a job at Grady in February 2007 despite admitting on his employment application that he had been convicted three decades ago for possession of stolen property in Chicago.

Hospital officials ran a criminal background check on Jawara, which is done for all prospective hospital employees, and it only showed that conviction from 1977, Jefferson said.

The Police Department, however, did a similar criminal check on Jawara when it began investigating him, Jefferson said, and that one revealed a handful of arrests all over metro Atlanta since the late 1980s —- and at least one additional conviction in Cobb County on a charge of theft by deception. It lists arrests on charges of domestic violence, cruelty to children, drug possession and battery.

As a result, Grady is currently looking into whether it can do more thorough criminal background checks that uncover all arrests and convictions, the attorney said.

Jawara's supervisors were apparently oblivious that he might have been stealing from patients: One of his performance reviews stated that he had a "good grasp on handling valuables for patients" and gave him a good overall rating as an employee.

Jawara has been fired from Grady and is awaiting trial on theft charges after a Fulton County judge rejected his plea deal.

When Jawara was arrested on charges of stealing from a second patient last month, he described himself as a protege to another hospital worker who was stealing, Detective P.J. Roberson said.

"I learned this from someone else," he told police, Roberson said. The detective would not say whether police are now investigating another current or former Grady employee for similar crimes.

Jawara's scheme was to make the chaos of the emergency room and the vulnerability of patients work in his favor, Roberson said. When relatives inquired about their loved one's property, he made them feel guilty for asking, the detective said.

"That's a perfect scam," Roberson said. "You use their grief to their advantage."

Jane Pounds, a 64-year-old retired school janitor, was brought into Grady's emergency room on Nov. 6 with heart problems.

At the time, the $700 rent on her DeKalb County apartment was due, along with some other monthly bills. In her purse, Pounds had four money orders worth $1,100 to cover those bills, said her daughter, Charlene Benton. She was whisked into surgery and then moved to another floor. Days later, Benton retrieved her mother's property from hospital security and brought it to Pounds.

Pounds immediately noticed that something was wrong.

"She said, 'My money orders are missing,' " said Benton, 41. "She said, 'Baby, that's mama's rent and bill money.' "

Benton says she complained to hospital security and reported it to police, but nothing came of it.

Pounds died three weeks later.

Last month, when news of Jawara's arrest broke, Benton went straight for her mother's hospital paperwork.

She found some Grady documents, including her mother's personal belongings checklist. It does not list any money orders.

The name of the hospital worker who prepared the checklist is printed in the upper-left corner and signed at the bottom: Tacuma Jawara.

Benton is now trying to trace the money orders through Western Union to find out who cashed them.

Others who have lost property never filed a police report because they had too much going on at once.

Debbie Henson, 51, was just happy to be alive.

Henson, who lives in Dallas, was critically injured in a September 2004 car wreck in Douglas County. She was brought to Grady with a broken neck and fractured skull, among other injuries.

Grady staffers gave her husband a bag of property that Henson had on her when she was brought in. But a diamond bracelet and pendant worth more than $10,000 were missing.

Henson's daughter pushed Grady for answers, she said. She was told the family could view the surveillance footage of Henson while she was in the emergency room.

"But it was going to be very expensive and had to be done at a certain time and certain place under certain circumstances," Henson said.

So she dropped it and focused on healing.

"At that point, it was like, 'I was lucky to be here,' " she said.

WHILE THEY LAY IN BED

Other thefts or missing property reported at Grady Memorial Hospital:

> Corey Donegan of Lithonia reported he had $500 with him when he went to Grady's emergency room on Sept. 9. When he was released two days later, the hospital only gave him $19.

> Christopher Johnson of Mableton told police he had $1,800 in cash and a Rolex watch valued at $10,000 on him that disappeared after he went to Grady's emergency room on June 25, 2007, with a gunshot wound to his back.

> Annie Lee Rome, 69, of Decatur reported on March 2 that $600 in cash was missing from her purse after she came to Grady by ambulance and was put in a hospital room.

> Glenda Harvey, 53, of East Point told police that someone stole her wallet from her hospital room during an 11-day period in January and used her checks and Visa card.

> Ebony Middleton, 31, of Smyrna reported that someone took $63 from her purse as she slept in her room on May 17, 2007.