EAST ST. LOUIS • Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and other officials made an unannounced inspection of an East St. Louis nursing home Thursday morning, looking for potential danger from retired criminals.

What they found instead was a wanted one.

While reviewing the backgrounds of residents at the Virgil Calvert Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, 5050 Summit Avenue, investigators with Madigan's group discovered that one of the residents — identified by officials as Rothford Darden, 61, of St. Louis — was wanted on an active Missouri drug warrant. He was taken into custody by the St. Clair County sheriff's deputies, to be transferred to Missouri.

"He knew he was wanted. He seemed perfectly able-bodied," said Madigan spokesperson Cara Smith. "These nursing homes have been turning out to be the perfect place for hiding out. We've found wanted people in every one" checked so far.

In fact, the nursing home inspection program through Madigan's office — which started in December and wasn't specifically targeted at catching wanted felons — has so far led to the discoveries of 61 people under active warrants living in the 12 homes inspected so far, and 17 arrests on the spot. (Action on the others is pending.)

Nursing homes are required to do background checks on their residents and make special arrangements to separate and monitor those with dangerous criminal histories, such as sex offenders and others who could pose a threat to fellow residents.

Residents are "our parents and our grandparents ... One day they could be one of us," Madigan said.

She said she went along on Thursday's 10 a.m. inspection because the East St. Louis home had come under scrutiny earlier this year for health and safety issues. Her impression was that "they seem to be much better than they had been in the past," she said.

A woman who came to the phone at the nursing home referred all questions about the inspection back to Madigan's office.

Madigan's office began the surprise inspections, dubbed "Operation Compliance," after complaints that people in some homes around the state were being victimized by fellow residents. She was accompanied Thursday by St. Clair County Sheriff Mearl Justus and officials of the Illinois State Police, the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Illinois Department on Aging and the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation.

When asked whether she would be willing to put one of her own parents in that home, Madigan (daughter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan) quipped, "It would be geographically inconvenient."