Torn up by a devastating vandalism attack, All Families Healthcare in Kalispell will not reopen in the near future while owner Susan Cahill ponders the clinic’s future.

Cahill, a physician assistant, said Thursday that she is taking the summer off after the attack, which left her in shock and no longer trusting the community.

“This office, like my old one, was warm and looked more like a living room than a waiting room,” Cahill said. “I pride myself on having people be comfortable.”

She had just remodeled the entire office inside an old house on First Avenue East. She installed new cabinets, painted the rooms, put up window coverings and hung family pictures as well as other pictures that were important to her.

But all that work was savagely undone, allegedly by 24-year-old Zachary Klundt, who faces four felony charges ranging from burglary to theft.

“Everything, everything, everything was destroyed,” Cahill said. “This person did not leave a pencil unturned.”

According to Cahill, her receptionist showed up to work at 8:30 a.m. March 4 and discovered someone had punched the glass out of the back door. Rather than enter the office, she went into the adjoining Lonnevik Law Firm and said someone had broken in and asked them to call police.

“By the time I got there, there were law enforcement everywhere and they wouldn’t let me in,” Cahill said. “They said there was extensive damage and they needed to do a thorough investigation before I could see it.”

She was not able to see what happened until the office was released back into her control on Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, she was told repeatedly that she needed to understand that the damage was extensive in preparation for the shock of seeing it herself.

Cahill said that when she finally went inside, Kalispell Police Department Capt. Scott Warnell offered to first let her see a video of the damage.

“I could tell he was trying to prepare me,” she said, “but I said no, I wanted to go in and see it.”

What she saw, she said, was too much to absorb.

A charging document in the case against Klundt alleges that he damaged art, furniture, medical instruments, medical supplies and file cabinets, then broke into the basement and damaged the main sewer line, furnace and water heater.

Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan said Klundt allegedly broke a hole in the sewer line, covered everything in the main portion of the business with iodine, sprayed a fire extinguisher over everything and smashed every picture in the building.

Cahill said the boiler system and plumbing were destroyed and noted that her insurance would cover very little of the damage.

She did not yet know the full cost of the damage, but said that “the cost goes so much deeper than things.”

“I think that the only worse thing would be if someone was dead in there — which could have happened — and I keep being very thankful that there was not,” Cahill said.

She said that she has been feeling more and more despair and anger over the last week.

“I’ve never been through something like that in my life,” she said. “There was so much hatred toward me in that place.”

Cahill said there is no doubt in her mind that the vandalism was a personal attack against her.

“I’ve been in this community for 38 years and have tried to be respectful of other people’s belief systems in the hope that they would also be respectful of mine and know that I provide excellent health care,” she said. “Now I don’t trust this community. I’m brokenhearted.”

With help from her employees, friends and some patients, Cahill is now trying to pick up the pieces, most recently by trying to gather up scattered charts so she can respond to her patients’ needs. She said her phone line is back up and she has been helping her patients get their prescriptions.

All Families Healthcare was a full family practice and Cahill said approximately 10 percent of her business consisted of first-trimester abortions. She said her clinic served women not only in Northwest Montana, but also Northern Idaho, since that state does not have a single clinic that provides abortions.

The nearest clinic still offering abortions is in Missoula.

Reporter Jesse Davis may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at jdavis@dailyinterlake.com.