MOUNT PLEASANT - Rosemary Palonis' troubles all started when she picked up the nozzle to refuel her car Monday afternoon.

It was the start of a nightmare for the Chicago resident, who came here to visit her sister, Patricia Palonis, for Super Bowl weekend. Monday Rosemary was ready to head home with her two daughters and two grandchildren.

But when she paid for her gasoline at MJ Petroleum, 2325 Racine St., and tried to start her car, Palonis said, "It went about 20 feet, and the whole car shut off, and it wouldn't start."

"My daughter said, 'Mom, it has to be the gas.'"

Indeed it was. Palonis had unknowingly pumped both water and gasoline into her fuel tank.

The station owner/manager, Aziz Abdul, said Tuesday that the inner cap to the bulk tank was loose. With plentiful rain and melting snow, water had seeped through the upper cap and into the underground tank.

"It's a bad situation," Abdul said. "It's not our fault, it's just an accident. No one does that kind of thing purposely.

"We don't know who left the cap loose."

A petroleum inspector for the Wisconsin Department of Commerce confirmed the problem of water-diluted gasoline Tuesday. The agency shut down the pumps - although they'd already been turned off Monday afternoon.

Palonis wasn't the only motorist to suffer at the station's pumps Monday afternoon, before they were shut off. A Mount Pleasant police officer dispatched to the scene was told that eight to 10 drivers complained of stalled vehicles after filling up there. The officer took names from five victims, but the report is bare bones only because it is a civil matter.

Palonis said that before she bought about $20 worth of gas, "There were vehicles breaking down farther down the street."

"People kept thinking it was their cars." After she saw four or five people suffer the same fate, Palonis and her daughter started warning other motorists.

"As drivers were pulling up we kept saying, 'The gas is bad - don't pump gas.'"

Palonis said a fill-up that started about 3:15 p.m. kept her and her family stuck at the station until past 6:30 p.m. "My feet were sopping wet. (Station personnel) were giving me no help."

After her car was towed away, Palonis said she had to stay in Racine, buy dinner for six people, go to a laundromat and hire a baby-sitter while she washed clothes. She missed work Tuesday, and her eighth-grade daughter missed a test.

Palonis said her combined towing and repair bill was $593.19. The bill listed cleaning water from the gas tank, gas lines, pump and filter, putting in new spark plugs, disposal of bad gas and towing. She put it all on a credit card. "I'm not a rich person, and this is really going to hurt me."

Then Palonis drove her family back to Chicago in a snowstorm.

But everybody lost, if Abdul reimburses the victims, as he hinted he would do. Asked about paying them for repairs, he replied, "I don't know at this point, but we will try to help them out as much as we can."

Meanwhile, his station is shut down just like the vehicles that got the bad gas.

Department of Commerce spokesman Tony Hozeny said the underground tank was to be drained Tuesday. After it is refilled, the fuel will be tested before the station will be allowed to reopen.