Lori McVicar needs a plan. Six years ago, the Gilroy mother
embezzled more than $50,000 from a school parents’ club, a sum she
has yet to fully repay.
Gilroy – Lori McVicar needs a plan.
Six years ago, the Gilroy mother embezzled more than $50,000 from a school parents’ club, a sum she has yet to fully repay. McVicar forged signatures on at least 16 checks intended for library books and playground equipment at Rod Kelley School, replacing payees’ names with her own, and was convicted of grand theft and forgery in 2002 after fellow club members discovered her crime.
Friday, a Superior Court judge asked her to come up with a plan to repay the $25,437.44 she still owes to the club. If she doesn’t, she could face time in a Southern California work furlough center.
“What I want to hear is the plan …” said Superior Court Judge Edward Lee, “not further expressions of desire to pay it back.”
Tuesday, McVicar paid $3,200 of the debt, in what public defender Thompson Sharkey called “a good-faith payment.”
“She wants to pay this entire amount off,” said Sharkey, “and she realizes she won’t be free of the criminal justice system until she does.”
The payment is the largest McVicar has made since her sentencing in 2002, when she ponied up roughly $24,000 of the sum at once. That substantial payment kept her out of jail in 2002, said Judge Lee, who also heard the original case. Since then, she’s made far smaller payments, totaling nearly $9,000, according to district attorneys.
But deputy district attorney Mike Galli was unimpressed by the 11th-hour payment, and complained that McVicar is literally buying time to avoid doing time. Prosecutors have asked Judge Lee to remand McVicar into custody, citing her dismal payment record since her sentencing. Her payments diminished rapidly year by year, dropping from $245 in 2004 to a single $25 payment in 2006.
“The defendant is being manipulative,” argued Galli. “We’re just wasting the court’s time.”
McVicar has countered that multiple surgeries and a life-threatening illness have hindered her. Further details on her hardships were unavailable, as both McVicar and her attorney declined to speak with the Dispatch. Recently, she lost a job as a medical assistant, and attributes the loss to ongoing news coverage of her case. The Gilroy woman has also complained that a $3,000 payment she made years ago was never credited to the Department of Revenue; Galli said the DA’s office is looking into her claim.
“I’ve done everything I’ve been asked,” she told Judge Lee in court June 15.
But prosecutors are wary: Linda Hatcher, a district attorney’s investigator, is checking whether McVicar has accurately described her assets and expenses – including where she’s living – to the court. Hatcher declined to comment further on the investigation.
Judge Lee opted to allow McVicar and Sharkey about six weeks to hatch a plan to repay Rod Kelley Parents Club. Jailing the Gilroy woman wouldn’t help, he decided, though a Department of Corrections-run work furlough center in Southern California might be an effective alternative to prison, allowing McVicar to work by day to repay the club.
“If I simply remand her into custody,” Judge Lee said, “nobody’s going to get much money … We need a plan to make the victims whole.”
Those victims filled a row in the courtroom opposite McVicar, who nervously tapped one foot, clutching a stack of folders against her chest, as she waited for her hearing to start. Former club members Jan Cleveland and Laura Case, along with school principal Luis Carrillo, Cleveland’s husband Mark and several of their children, and Case’s son attended Friday’s hearing, hoping to see consequences.
“The damage she caused is ongoing,” said Mark Cleveland. “The lack of the prestige that the club has had” after the scandal “hampered our ability to raise money. We’ve raised a third of what we used to.”
“There hasn’t been any closure to it,” Carrillo said quietly.
McVicar’s next sentencing hearing is scheduled for 1:30pm Aug. 24 at the Hall of Justice in San Jose.
