worried about patients getting inaccurate test results. He was also
concerned for his grandfather’s reputation. Although he felt certain
Theranos would eventually be exposed, he wanted to hasten the
process to give his grandfather the chance to clear his name. George
Shultz was ninety-four and might not be around all that much longer.
“He made it through Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal with
his integrity intact,” Tyler told me. “I’m sure he’ll get through
Theranos if he’s still alive to make things right.”
On his way out the door, Tyler had printed his email to Holmes and
Balwani’s response and smuggled them out under his shirt. He also
still had the emails he’d exchanged with the New York State Health
Department about proficiency testing. This was music to my ears. I
asked him to send me everything, which he promptly did.
It was time to head to Palo Alto. But before going, there was
somewhere else I wanted to visit first.
—
I NEEDED TO PROVE that the company was producing inaccurate blood-
test results. The only way to do that was to find doctors who had
received questionable lab reports and sent their patients to get
retested elsewhere. The best place to go looking was Phoenix, where
Theranos had expanded to more than forty locations. My first thought
had been to pay a visit to Carmen Washington, but she’d left the
Walgreens clinic she worked at on the corner of Osborn Road and
Central Avenue and didn’t have the names of the three patients she’d
told me about.
I had another lead, though, after scanning Yelp to see if anyone had
complained about a bad experience with Theranos. Sure enough, a
woman who appeared to be a doctor and went by “Natalie M.” had.
Yelp has a feature that allows you to send messages to reviewers, so I
sent her a note with my contact information. She called me the next
day. Natalie M.’s real name was Nicole Sundene. She was a family
practitioner in the Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills and she was very
unhappy with Theranos. The previous fall, she had sent one of her