A Yucca Valley businesswoman is suing San Bernardino County and a sheriff’s deputy over her arrest and incarceration in December 2014.

Lucinda Cox filed her lawsuit in February in federal court in Riverside, alleging that she was arrested on charges that were not thoroughly investigated and jailed at West Valley Detention Center for seven days because her bail had been improperly raised to $250,000.

Cox says she was falsely arrested without probable cause and subjected to humiliation, fear, injury and pain.

She is asking a judge to order the county and Detective Heidi Hague to pay her attorney’s fees, the costs of her lawsuit and punitive damages.

Cox alleges that in October 2013, her former business partner, Hollis Griffin, with whom she co-owned Elite Cosmetology, filed a report with the Sheriff’s Department alleging that Cox had stolen money by forging a check from a joint account that required both of their signatures for withdrawals.

Hague investigated and in October 2013, she filed a report with the district attorney’s office. Cox contends the report was incomplete.

The district attorney’s office filed felony charges against Cox in May, and the prosecuting attorney asked Judge C. Malone to set bail at $250,000 and order that Cox had to prove any bail she paid did not come from criminal activities. The judge agreed, and declared Cox a fugitive from justice.

Cox says the $250,000 bail was inappropriately high. A bail schedule from 2013 for San Bernardino County shows bail for a charge of grand theft was set at $50,000, forgery was $25,000 and embezzlement was $25,000. Combined, they would have been $100,000.

In an April 7 phone interview, Cox also said that while she was declared a fugitive, she did not know she was wanted for arrest. “I had no idea that there was any warrant for my arrest at all,” she said.

Around 8 p.m. Dec. 23, 2014, she was arrested while performing massage therapy for two clients in Yucca Valley.

“I was doing what I’ve done for 20 years, which was every other Tuesday night I have a client … and I go to their home and I do therapeutic massage,” she said. “In the middle of the second massage with the wife, I heard a pounding on the door.”

Two deputies arrested Cox, then 61 years old, and took her to the Joshua Tree jail. From there, she was sent to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.

“I am not the same since,” Cox said in the interview. “I witnessed a lot of gang violence, I witnessed a lot of fighting. West Valley Detention Center has just been sued for torture. That’s what happens down there.”

Cox referred to class-action lawsuits alleging that deputies at the jail tortured inmates with stun guns.

“I lost 10 pounds while I was there. The food is not fit to eat,” she added. “I was never given utensils. … I was freezing the entire time. I was threatened by gang members. I was put in a tank with people who have been career criminals for 27 years. I was beyond frightened. It was hell. And it was Christmas and I was there through the holidays.”

On Dec. 30, Cox’s attorney, Keith Bardellini, was able to get her released without paying bail.

After hearing evidence from Hague on Feb. 20, 2015, a judge found insufficient evidence to charge Cox with embezzlement. The charges of forgery and grand theft were dismissed in July.

She claims that after the hearing, the district attorney provided her with results of a handwriting analysis establishing her innocence.

David Wert, spokesman for San Bernardino County, said the county prefers not to comment on lawsuits. The attorneys representing the county and Hague are scheduled to file their responses to Cox’s allegations next week.