This time it wasn’t Peter Pan whisking Wendy Darling away to Neverland. It was Peter Pan Peanut Butter confining Wendy Willett of Oak Harbor to bed for three miserable, nauseating days.

In mid-January, Willett misplaced a jar of Peter Pan Peanut Butter. Jonesing for a sandwich, she dipped into her peanut butter cache.

“I open my peanut butter one jar at a time, but I had one that was almost empty and I couldn’t find it,” she said. “So, I opened up another one and made a sandwich. I was very sick for three days. Then several weeks later it was on the news and here in the newspaper I read about the recall on Peter Pan Peanut Butter.”

The federal Food and Drug Administration issued a widely-publicized, nationwide warning Feb. 14 that two peanut butter brands, Great Value and Peter Pan, were linked to possible contamination by Salmonella Tennessee, a bacterium that causes foodborne illness.

The affected jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter have a product code located on the lid of the jar that begins with the number “2111.”

The FDA warning stated that both the Peter Pan and Great Value brands are manufactured in a single facility in Georgia by ConAgra. A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked 288 cases of foodborne illness in 39 states to the tainted peanut butter.

The jar that Willett said made her violently ill was purchased, along with a second jar, at the commissary at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station by her daughter-in-law after May of last year. The Oak Harbor resident of seven years has preached the gospel of Peter Pan her entire life.

“I love Peter Pan,” she said. “It’s my favorite brand. And I think there’s a difference. I can taste the difference and I really prefer it. My daughter-in-law got it for me from the commissary. So, that means that some of this tainted peanut butter made it to the commissary.”

Willett also had a third, smaller jar of Peter Pan that she received in a trade from a friend, who originally got it from Help House.

“Now, this one I didn’t open, but it’s the same lot number: 2111, from Georgia,” she said.

The lids of the jars purchased at the commissary bore the same lot number. “I know one of them is tainted because I got sick. I’m not going to test the other ones, that’s for sure,” Willett said.

The Texas transplant was bedridden for three days with extreme, debilitating vertigo and classic symptoms of food poisoning.

“The vertigo was so bad that I couldn’t get out of bed,” she said. “My friends had to come fix meals for me. I forced myself to go to the bathroom because I had to. I would run into the walls trying to aim for the door because of the vertigo. You don’t even have to get up for the room to spin.”

Although a class action lawsuit has already been filed by a Seattle attorney, Willett said she would not be swept up in the whirlwind of litigation. She chose to ride the sickness out, at the time unaware that she might be battling a bout of salmonella.

“People have been hospitalized all over the country,” she said. “And people are suing. Now, I don’t intend anything like that because I didn’t go to a doctor or anything. But I know how sick I was and my friends here know how sick I was.”

Dr. Roger Case, Island County health officer, said in a press release that there are only four known cases of salmonella–induced illness identified in the entire state as having been the result of tainted peanut butter, and none associated with the outbreak have been reported in Washington residents since December 1, 2006.

Willett, however, tells a different story. Her motivation for speaking out has been to inform Whidbey Island that the contamination has hit closer to home than experts think. The number of cases could be understated because of people like Willett who chose to stay in bed and suffer through the illness.

“I just want people here on Whidbey Island to be aware,” she said. “There’s only been four cases in Washington state and the articles don’t say where. I know it got here to Oak Harbor.”

Oak Harbor resident Kathy Lundgren returned a jar of possibly tainted Great Value peanut butter to Wal-Mart on Monday after seeing the infamous “2111” code printed on its top. She was more fortunate than Willett.

“I hadn’t eaten any,” Lundgren said. She uses peanut butter to make her dog’s medicine go down easier, but she said the dog was still working on a jar of Western Family.

Lundgren purchased the Great Value peanut butter on Feb. 6. Wal-Mart gave back her money, $2.23, when she returned the jar Monday.

Becky Housden, co-manager of the Oak Harbor Wal-Mart, estimated Wednesday that customers had returned “eight or nine” jars of peanut butter since the FDA’s warning.

Case said no action was taken locally on the peanut butter situation. “Local public health did not make a local news release because it was ‘old news’ by the time the local media could bring it to the public’s attention via newspapers,” he said in an e-mail.

The health officer also said that no evidence exists that the Oak Harbor Wal-Mart sold tainted peanut butter, only that reports have come in of one or two people becoming sick from eating the protein-rich paste.

“We are pursuing cultures on one person, but have no report yet of salmonella,” Case said.

Through it all, Willett is standing by her brand. One possible bout of salmonella cannot tarnish the good name of Peter Pan Peanut Butter, at least in this loyal consumer’s mind.

“I’m not going to stop using Peter Pan, because it’s my favorite and it has been all my life,” she said. “That’s 58 years. I’ll send my lids in and see what they do.”

Consumers whose jars have lids with a product code beginning with “2111” can send the lid along with their names and addresses to ConAgra Foods, P.O. Box 57078, Irvine, CA 92619-7078. Or return it to the store where it was purchased.

For more information, call 866-344-6970.