Holly Bennett doesn’t remember the ambulance that rushed her to a Colorado hospital in septic shock, or the MRI that showed her back was riddled with abscesses, or the emergency surgery that saved her life. All she remembers is waking up to a Boulder police officer standing in her hospital room.
“And he says ‘I’m giving you a ticket for possession of cocaine.’ I said, cocaine? Cocaine? I don’t do cocaine. And he said, ‘Well, that’s what was in your purse.'”
Bennet says the hospital found a prescription drug crushed in her purse and turned it over to police who — using what’s known as a colorimetric field test — determined it was cocaine. The Boulder District Attorney’s Office offered Bennet diversion if she pleaded guilty to possession…