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U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo’s behavior last year while serving in Congress and running for reelection was so frightening and traumatizing to staff members that aides proposed a safety plan requesting that sharp objects be removed from the Colorado Democrat’s offices. They also wanted assurances that subordinates not be responsible for talking her “through suicidal thoughts” or “keeping her company during a crisis.”
The plan, a copy of which was obtained by The Colorado Sun, was dismissed and staff members say they were told they had a choice: either commit to contending with Caraveo’s mental health challenges or resign within a day.
This story is based on nearly a year of reporting and conversations with more than 20 people, including interviews with four former Caraveo aides, as well as documents and audio recordings from first responders obtained by The Sun, both through public records requests and from a law enforcement source.
The former staff members, who spoke to The Sun on the condition of anonymity, said they felt mistreated and taken advantage of by the congresswoman, especially when her mental health issues led to a pair of harrowing incidents last year.
Caraveo twice appeared to attempt suicide in situations witnessed by staff members. The first time was in February 2024, when she sent concerning messages to aides who rushed to her Thornton home and found that she had taken 19 sleeping pills and was drinking alcohol, leading to an emergency response and hospitalization.
Then, in April 2024, Caraveo showed up to an event at her congressional office in Northglenn after ingesting a large quantity of a powerful sedative and had to be rushed to a hospital. Aides called 911 and led police and firefighters to the congresswoman.
Caraveo lost her 8th Congressional District reelection bid in November and is now running to reclaim her seat in 2026.
Caraveo has acknowledged her struggles with mental health. Last year, she disclosed that she had been treated for depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. But the way her work was affected, and how that affected those who worked for her, has not been previously reported.
Caraveo declined an interview request from The Sun. The news outlet provided her with a week to respond to detailed, written questions. She didn’t answer the prompts, providing only a written statement instead.
“Depression is a chronic illness that unlike many others has terrible effects on the family, friends and co-workers of the affected individual,” Caraveo wrote. “As I’ve been open about, I was in a dark place when I was suffering from depression and I know the disease led me to treat my friends, family and my staff in ways that I regret. I’m deeply sorry.”
Caraveo said that “suffering from depression does not disqualify anyone from doing hard things or working to make their communities better.”
“I remain committed to my treatment and continuing to represent Colorado families like my own and that of the patients I served as a pediatrician,” she said.
The former staff members said they were speaking out as Caraveo runs for Congress again to warn people who may be considering working for the Democrat about what they should expect.
“I don’t want other staff to be put in this position,” one former aide said.
The former staff members spoke to The Sun on the condition of anonymity because they said they fear retaliation. They shared contemporaneous messages and documents corroborating their stories and revealing a chaotic and hostile work environment that they say took a major toll personally and professionally.
While all four said they were highly sympathetic to Caraveo’s mental health issues, they said the way she treated them as a result was not OK.
“It’s completely fine to struggle with mental illness,” another former staff member said. “But it is one thing to struggle with mental illness and it’s another thing to weaponize it.”
High staff turnover linked to how Caraveo treated subordinates
Caraveo had the highest rate of staff turnover among Colorado’s congressional delegation, and among the highest rates in Congress, during her single term, according to a Colorado Sun analysis.
Top positions in her office turned over sometimes more than once in her two years in Washington.
“Everyone left the office because of the way Yadira treated people and her mental stability,” one of the former staffers said.
The allegations of staff mistreatment, paired with Caraveo’s mental health struggles, prompted top Democrats to encourage Caraveo not to run for Congress again in the 8th District after narrowly losing her reelection bid to Republican Gabe Evans in 2024. The loss helped give the GOP a narrow majority in the U.S. House.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democrats’ U.S. House campaign arm responsible for recruiting and backing candidates, is not actively supporting her bid. Representatives for the group didn’t comment when asked about its interactions with Caraveo as she runs again.
Caraveo’s 2026 campaign website does not list any endorsements.
But Caraveo, who received support from the highest levels of Democratic politics when she first revealed her mental health struggles, is pressing forward anyway.
The stakes are high next year in the 8th District, one of the most competitive U.S. House seats in the nation. The toss-up contest could once again decide which party controls Congress.
Caraveo lost to Evans last year by about 2,500 votes, or less than a percentage point, in a race in which about $40 million was spent.
One other Democrat – state Rep. Manny Rutinel – has jumped into the contest to unseat Evans and several other Democrats are expected to get in the race, too. None of the former aides who spoke with The Sun are supporting any of Caraveo’s announced or potential primary opponents.
While Caraveo has recently opened up about the effect of her mental health challenges on her staff, she wasn’t previously so forthcoming about her struggles.
The Sun first learned about how Caraveo’s mental health issues were affecting her aides in the lead-up to the last election.
On the Saturday before Election Day 2024, The Sun found out about the apparent Feb. 8, 2024, suicide attempt after obtaining an emergency mental health hold application from a law enforcement source. The document showed that responders were called by aides to Caraveo’s home that night and found her expressing suicidal thoughts.
A police officer wrote in the application that Caraveo said she had taken 19 sleeping pills and was drinking alcohol, and that she said something to the effect of “this will put me to sleep for awhile.”
The then-congresswoman was placed on a mental health hold and transported to St. Anthony North Hospital by the Thornton Fire Department, the application says.
Colorado law allows a police officer, doctor, nurse, psychologist, therapist or social worker to place someone on a 72-hour involuntary mental health hold if they are deemed an imminent danger to themselves or others. During the hold, a patient is regularly assessed and must be released within 72 hours if they don’t need further treatment.
Caraveo’s team responded to The Sun’s questions about the incident with a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer sent a day before the election, threatening a lawsuit should The Sun proceed with a story.
The Sun was unable to complete its reporting before Election Day. When Caraveo lost to Evans and stepped out of the public eye, The Sun ceased reporting on the incidents.
But in light of Caraveo’s decision to run for Congress again, The Sun resumed the reporting, which led to interviews with the former staff members.
The former staffers said they were also driven to come forward now in part because of a recent interview Caraveo did with Colorado Public Radio and how she characterized her two apparent suicide attempts in situations witnessed by aides. The former staff members said she downplayed the events.
Caraveo, in speaking with CPR, characterized the response to the February incident as the staff member misunderstanding a text message she sent about not waking up in time to keep to her schedule the following day. She told CPR that she took enough sleeping pills to leave her “just shy of” needing to be put in intensive care.
“I remember going online and – ever the doctor – looking up the dose that would land me in the intensive care unit and then taking just shy of that,” Caraveo told CPR.
As for the April 6, 2024 incident, Caraveo told CPR she was dealing with a foot injury and took a “handful” of medication, which led to an ambulance being called to her congressional office and a trip to the emergency room before being discharged home.
A North Metro Fire Rescue report obtained by The Sun said first responders were called to Caraveo’s office in Northglenn to care for a person suffering a medical crisis.
Emergency responder radio traffic archived on the website Broadcastify indicates the call was for an overdose, where a woman had reportedly taken about 20 lorazepam, a benzodiazepine that is prescribed to treat anxiety and sleep disorders. It’s commonly known by the brand name Ativan. The Sun has confirmed through multiple sources that the woman was Caraveo.
On that day, Caraveo was set to meet in her district congressional office with local Latino leaders and then appear at an event at another office in the same building to open her 2024 campaign headquarters.
However, the meeting with the Latino leaders was cut short when the medication Caraveo had taken started to take effect. First responders arrived and whisked Caraveo to a hospital.
The campaign headquarters kickoff went on without her.
The Sun requested additional documents from the Northglenn Police Department and Adams County Sheriff’s Office about the April 6, 2024, emergency call. Both agencies sent officers to the scene.
The agencies denied the requests in September, citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, a federal law protecting the release of medical information. The law applies to health care professionals, not law enforcement. However, Colorado police departments and sheriff’s offices can reject criminal justice-related open records requests if they determine, in their sole discretion, that their release is not in the public’s interest.
Adams County Sheriff Gene Claps was one of the people who responded to the April 6, 2024, overdose because he was already there, in a personal capacity, to appear at Caraveo’s campaign headquarters opening that day. In a statement, a spokesman said Claps “did not arrive on the floor where the situation was until Northglenn police and medical personnel were already on scene.”
Claps, a Democrat, endorsed Caraveo’s 2024 bid and appeared in one of her 2024 campaign’s TV ads defending her record on immigration.
The Sun asked Caraveo, who is a licensed physician, whether she consumed the lorazepam before or after driving to the April 2024 events at her office. She did not answer.
Caraveo acknowledged in her interview with CPR that some of the turnover among her staff was because of her mental health struggles.
“Many times (my staff members) were the only ones that I felt like I could be open with and not pretend to be OK all the time, because that was the rest of my life – pretending that I was OK,” she told CPR. “I know that it placed undue pressure on them, and I’ve apologized to them many times. But also, (I) needed them to understand and acknowledge that it was an illness and that I couldn’t completely control how I was reacting to that illness until I finally got help.”
But the former staff members who spoke with The Sun said they never received an apology. Some said they had to enter therapy to cope with what they experienced while working for Caraveo.
The former staffers said they felt mistreated by Caraveo soon after beginning their jobs.
The former aides reported that Caraveo would frequently snap at them or have mental health struggles that would lead her to cancel events on her calendar. When those cancellations happened, she would blame staff for the consequences, the former staff members said, including frayed relationships with community leaders and campaign fundraising interruptions.
Caraveo would also often complain about the responsibilities of being in Congress and running for reelection in a swing district, the former staff members said. That left aides unsure of how to do their jobs.
“It was never particularly easy,” one of the former aides said. “She was always a really tough boss because she had shifting expectations and she didn’t like her job. I never saw her enjoy it, even when she was good at it. And she was frequently good at it.”
The staff members’ proposed safety plan included an outline of what aides should do if Caraveo attempted to harm herself in the presence of subordinates again. Staff also requested that Caraveo not bring sharp “or otherwise dangerous” objects to work.
Finally, the plan asked that aides not be responsible for hiding Caraveo’s mental health issues from the public, including the news media.
The Sun’s questions to Caraveo included why the safety plan was rejected and whether the congresswoman ever brought a weapon to work. Her written statement did not address either.
The Sun also asked Caraveo what steps she has taken to prepare for the high-pressure 2026 race in the 8th Congressional District, what she has learned about how to interact with her staff and whether she has committed to any changes in how she deals with subordinates.
In her statement, which The Sun is sharing in its entirety, Caraveo said “I want all Coloradans to understand that with the right treatment, you truly can get through such dark times and into a better place.”
“Discussions of depression all too often continue stigmas that make it harder for people to get the help they need, and we must change that,” she said. “Through treatment I have seen profound changes in my illness and I wish I had sought this kind of treatment decades ago. It has changed how I interact with others and see the world, as well as how I see and treat myself.”
The Democratic primary in the 8th District will be held in June 2026.
