By Erica C. Barnett

An independent investigation found it probable that Seattle Fire Department officials obtained blank vaccine cards and used them to falsely claim they were compliant with the city’s COVID vaccine requirement, PubliCola has learned.

The city launched the investigation after a fire lieutenant, Lance Fisher, told Seattle Fire Chief Harold Scoggins that people in the department were buying and selling fake vaccine cards. Fisher relayed this information during his own disciplinary hearing; he was one of many SFD employees who refused to get vaccinated during the pandemic.

According to the investigation—provided by Rose Terse, who frequently posts documents obtained through records requests on Muckrock—”a now former (retired) SFD employee contacted Lieutenant Fisher and offered him a CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination record card that Lieutenant Fisher ‘could fill out’ and submit to the City as fraudulent proof that he had complied with the vaccination mandate.” Fisher told investigators the cards came from a former COVID vaccination site that SFD shut down without safeguarding the blank vaccine cards, allowing a firefighter to grab the blank cards and sell them.

Later, Fisher said, he learned that there were blank vaccination cards at many fire stations, and “people could just take them.”

Fisher told investigators he “declined that offer” to get a fake vaccine card and told Scoggins, “It’s known that people are submitting fake vax cards. What are you doing to verify the authenticity?”

“According to Lieutenant Fisher, Chief Scoggins’ response was that ‘it wasn’t his problem,'” the investigator concluded.

Much of the investigator’s evidence consisted of Signal messages sent to and from Deputy Chief Tom Walsh on his city-issued phone, “suggest[ing] that a system and/or network existed through which SFD employees obtained COVID-19 vaccination cards, which they submitted to the City.”

“Facts found throughout the course of my investigation suggest that one or more SFD employees may have obtained CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination record cards; filled the cards out with false information to reflect that they had been vaccinated for COVID-19; submitted the cards to the City as proof of their compliance with the COVID-19 vaccination mandate; and were deemed to have satisfied the City’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate based on their submission of the CDC-issued COVID-19 vaccination record cards containing falsified information,” the independent investigator, Jennifer Parda-Aldrich, wrote.

“My investigation, however, did not reveal sufficient evidence from which I was able to make any conclusive findings, based on preponderance of the evidence, of the existence of any such practice or of the identity of any SFD employee(s) who submitted a COVID- 19 vaccination record card containing false information to reflect that they had been vaccinated for COVID-19 in satisfaction of the City’s vaccination mandate.”

PubliCola readers may recognize Walsh’s name. He was the deputy fire chief who, along with longtime firefighter Paul Patterson, sent emails to Scoggins in which he pretended to be a “proud Latino” South Park resident who was deeply offended by the term “brownout.”  The goal of the prank emails was to get the fire department to stop using the term to describe power outages in order to prove that the department was excessively “woke.”

Walsh and Patterson worked closely with right-wing talk show host Jason Rantz, who wrote about the hoax repeatedly and seemed to find it hilarious; they later collaborated with local right-wing activist Ari Hoffman to accuse Scoggins of breaking the law when he loaned stretchers to volunteer medics trying to get injured people out of the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in 2020.

Although the Seattle Police Department got the lion’s share of attention, positive and negative, for fighting against the city’s vaccine requirements, the Seattle Fire Department was also a hotbed of anti-vax sentiment.

Messages between Walsh and other fire department employees, including Patterson, along with a city IT staffer named Dan Whipple, include multiple references to people buying “art,” using Patterson as the go-between, for themselves and other fire department officials, including Walsh’s son, firefighter Devon Walsh.

For example, in this Signal exchange from December 2021, Patterson and Walsh discussed whether it would be better for Walsh and his son to wait a few days after his daughters and wife got their “art” so it won’t look “ridiculous”:

Patterson: No reason to think you guys wouldn’t shop together 🤔

I will see what the artist thinks

Just cause you get the piece sooner then later doesn’t mean you have to put it on display until you are ready

Walsh: Fair point. If I did return to the art show circuit, it would save me some sick time as well.

Paul Patterson. The Harriet Tubman of the SFD.

* * *

Walsh: Did a guy from 2’s named Seto or Setu or something like that get a piece of art from you?

Patterson: One thing about my art dealings is that it is totally Anonymous

Walsh: Well I am asking out of curiosity. What you should wonder is why I’m asking. I couldn’t pick this guy out of the police lineup, but I know that somebody’s done some artwork for him. If it’s you, you should tell him to keep his fucking mouth shut.

If you weren’t the artiest, just let me know that and I’ll tell him to keep his mouth shut. All we need is an audit.

Patterson: Wasn’t me, and I appreciate you looking out Yes I would have a sit down with him. It’s important for people to know it can be down but in a very discreet way.

Walsh:  My 20-year-old daughter came in the house and told me he had some art done. Now, the exact mechanism by which she found out is unimportant—He just needs to know that what happens in a fight club stays and fight club.

Had it been Hasting’s daughter, this is a different story.

Walsh referred to himself as Harriett Tubman in a Signal exchange with Whipple that same month, saying he had found “a path to get that one piece of paper that I need” in order to fulfill “my missing requirements to work at SFD.”

“If you had a friend who is counterfeiting $20 bills, that would be good,” Walsh wrote. “But if it was actually counterfeiting them at the US mint,…Well that would just be money at that point. Those bills would have real life serial numbers, and probably be appropriately placed in whatever database they put $20 bills in.”

Whipple later told investigators he thought he and Walsh were talking about a “joke” that “we were going to have to pay people to get us out of the state or country” because of the vaccine mandate. “I didn’t understand him to be referring to fake vax cards.”

Parda-Aldrich also looked into the possibility that Walsh and Deputy Chief Chris Lombard, who was then heading up the Community Safety and Communications Center had conspired with Walsh to produce evidence that the city was refusing to grant religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate, which could help bolster the claims of a group of former firefighters who sued the department over the requirement. The CSCC was the predecessor to today’s CARE Department, a civilian department that dispatches 911 calls.

In October 2021, after a meeting in which he told then-mayor Jenny Durkan’s policy advisor, Adrienne Thompson, that the CSCC was going to lose 10 percent of its staff if they had to comply with the vaccine mandate, Lombard wrote an email to himself and his own human-resources manager to establish for the record that the mayor’s office refused to provide accommodations for CSCC staff who refused to get the vaccine on religious grounds.

Signal messages between Walsh and Patterson, along with Signal messages between Walsh and fire lieutenant Chris Carter, show that the men believed Lombard was getting the mayor’s position in writing to help the plaintiffs in two lawsuits filed by firefighters who were fired for refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate. (In one exchange, Walsh referred to Lombard as “the kind of person who hides Jews under [the] floorboard.”)

Parda-Aldrich wrote that she was unable to substantiate the claim that Lombard wrote the email with the intent of establishing a written record that would help the suing firefighters. However, she did conclude he had improperly disclosed confidential personnel information—the identities of firefighters who asked for exemptions from the vaccination requirement—to Walsh.

Neither Walsh nor Patterson responded to requests for an interview; both have retired from the department. Lombard did not respond to a request for an interview.

A spokesperson for the fire department, Kim Schmanke, said no one at SFD has faced disciplinary action for falsifying vaccine cards, and said she does not know how firefighters might have gotten the cards, if they did so.

“SFD has no conclusive facts showing that employees falsified their vaccine cards and cannot take personnel actions without factual findings,” Schmanke said. “Although the April 2025 investigative report facts that ‘suggest’ SFD employees submitted authentic COVID-19 vaccination cards with falsified information to comply with the City’s vaccine mandate, the investigation was ‘unable to make any conclusive findings, based on a preponderance of the evidence, as to the existence of any such practice or the specific identity of any employee(s) who submitted a COVID-19 vaccination record card with falsified information.'”

Devon Walsh, Dan Whipple, Chris Lombard, and Lance Fisher all remain employed at the city.

The fire department considers the matter closed, Schmanke said. “However, if any new information comes to light, the department will take appropriate follow-up action.”