A “high-ranking” Cook County official “misused her position” to bypass registration for two relatives at a suburban COVID-19 mass vaccination site in January before it was open to the general public, the county’s office of the independent inspector general found.

       On Jan. 25 — a day before the Tinley Park Convention Center’s mass vaccination site fully opened — the unnamed official brought her mother and aunt to the location without an appointment, according to a Thursday report from Inspector General Patrick Blanchard.

       “The preponderance of the evidence developed during the course of this investigation supports the allegation that the subject official misused her position as a County employee to circumvent the COVID-19 vaccination registration process to provide a benefit to her family members that was not otherwise available to members of the general public,” the report says.

       The Tinley Park location provided vaccinations on Jan. 25 to select county employees and elected officials who were 65 and older, along with military personnel deployed there, before opening to the general public. Although the mother and aunt were eligible to get the vaccine that day — the first day anyone 65 and up could qualify — they were not authorized to receive inoculations at the Tinley Park location that day.

       The report says the official “utilized her position to gain access to the event, move her family members to the front of the line,” violating the county’s ethics code. Part of how she achieved this may have been through a relationship with another “high-ranking” county official who led the family into the facility, acting as a point person between them and the vaccination site workers, according to the report.

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       The official who brought her relatives told the inspector general’s office she went to the Tinley Park site without an appointment that day by mistake after media outlets reported its opening on Jan. 25, the report says. She said after she realized was there on the wrong date, the other top official told her it was OK to stay because he needed “press footage.”

       But that official told the inspector general’s office otherwise.

       Illinois National Guard members staff a COVID-19 mass vaccination site at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Jan. 25, 2021, the day an unnamed "high-ranking Cook County official" brought her mother and aunt to the location without an appointment, according to a report from Inspector Patrick Blanchard. (Youngrae Kim / Chicago Tribune)

       According to the other official, he did not know the first official’s relatives were not supposed to be there and had said he had no authority to approve anybody’s vaccination. He was merely there to attend the news conference, he said.

       While acknowledging the “contradicting statements are difficult to reconcile,” the report says the evidence supports that the official continued to push her relatives to get a vaccine after knowing they weren’t supposed to be there. She was “counseled on her duty to avoid any appearance of impropriety” as a punishment, according to the report.

       “As soon as it became apparent to the subject official that the TPCC was not open to the general public, including her mother and aunt, she should have stopped, turned around and left,” the report says. “Instead, the subject official used her position to gain access through security and proceeded to arrange for the vaccination of her mother and aunt.”

       ayin@chicagotribune.com

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