It was 1985, and thousands of people in Reno and across the country had just lost millions of dollars to a Ponzi scheme. Felicia O'Carroll was on the case.
The first woman to ever make partner at a Northern Nevada CPA firm, at the time she was the lead auditor in the Lemons and Associates bankruptcy.Â
"We found out, as we were auditing this, and doing forensic accounting, that there was so much fraud," she recalled in an interview with 2 News Nevada. "There was no way that there could be a group of secured creditors and a group of unsecured creditors. It was happenstance whether you got recorded in a valid deed of trust or whether it was one that was made up."
Thanks to the work of her team, and her testimony at trial, the judge decided to treat all those who had suffered financial losses equally in the bankruptcy.
They were out celebrating on a colleague's back deck when something hit her in the head.
What she didn't know was that she'd just been shot.
"When I put my head up, there was a little trickle of blood coming from right next to my eye," she said, later adding, "I couldn't believe that nobody had heard anything. To me, it was as loud as a bomb going off. And they thought, well, maybe it was an ice cube that exploded. You know, sometimes they get gas inside them. Or maybe it was a champagne cork."
She'd been standing next to the bankruptcy trustee, who had been receiving death threats over the case.
O'Carroll didn't see a doctor until days later, and it was six weeks before she finally scheduled a surgery to try to fix her pounding headache.
"And the nurse goes, when (the surgeon) pulled it out, she goes, what is that? And he grabbed my knee, and he said, Felicia, you are so lucky. It's a bullet."
A fraction of an inch further, and O'Carroll says she may have lost her eye - or her life.
To this day, the shooting is a cold case. She says police never found out whether it was a targeted attack on the trustee, or just a stray bullet.
It was an experience that marked a pivotal time in O'Carroll's life and her career. She'd just recently had her first child, a baby boy, and soon thereafter she made partner at her firm - an accomplishment she credits in part to everything she learned through the Dale Carnegie Training program that she was also attending.
O'Carroll says her love for her family also inspired her to get involved with charitable work. She's served thousands of hours at local nonprofits, including the Community Health Alliance, Food Bank, and Domestic Violence Resource Center.
All this, while she was also chipping away at the glass ceiling in her professional life.
"When I started in 1976, I was the only professional female," she said, adding, "Those first few years, I felt very isolated. Kind of like the duck out of water. And so I never wanted any others to feel that way."
She's made that goal a hallmark of her career, as she's advocated for women, children, and Northern Nevadans in need.
Those are just a few of the many reasons the Nevada Women's Fund will honor her as itS 2026 Hall of Fame inductee on Thursday, May 21.
O'Carroll says if she had one message for women in the workforce today, it's that you can do it all.
