Shelter director admits thefts
A longtime director of Ferry County’s emergency shelter for the homeless and domestic-violence victims pleaded guilty Friday to stealing the shelter’s furniture and supplies.
Lisa L. Phillips, 37, of Curlew, pleaded guilty in Superior Court to two counts of first-degree theft. In exchange, Prosecutor James von Sauer agreed to drop a third-degree theft charge and to recommend a one-month jail term when Phillips is sentenced June 10.
Phillips had managed the county-operated shelter and been a county domestic-violence and sexual-assault counselor for about 10 years when she was fired from her approximately $25,000-a-year position last month. She was dismissed when county officials discovered she took the shelter’s brand new furniture home and gave the shelter her old furniture, and she had stolen groceries and supplies from the shelter.
“She was a very trusted employee, a very long-term employee,” said Ferry County Community Services Director Bob Schwartz. “It’s just extremely disappointing.”
He said the 45 or so employees of Community Services, a county department that delivers a variety of social services, are shocked, saddened and angry.
The emergency shelter, in one of the state’s most impoverished counties, serves about 150 people a year.
“To take from them and from our program, that hurts,” Schwartz said.
Court documents indicate Phillips was in charge of ordering $2,300 worth of new furniture for the shelter early this year from a store in Republic, where the shelter is located in a house. The shelter’s two part-time attendants thought it was odd that the new furniture was dirty, threadbare and had dog hair on it when it arrived.
“Basically, she blew them off,” Schwartz said, telling the workers that she had gotten a bargain price. “Since she was the manager, they just kind of accepted it, but not for long.”
Even if the shelter workers hadn’t brought the issue to the attention of senior managers, an impending inventory would have detected the fraud, Schwartz said.
A sheriff’s investigation revealed that Phillips and her husband, Tom Brown, and a girl who wasn’t named picked up the shelter’s new furniture – a reclining sofa, a reclining chair, a glider chair, a coffee table and two end tables – from the store where it was ordered. Brown and the girl weren’t charged.
Court documents say that, seven hours after a sheriff’s deputy began investigating the theft, Phillips reported that the stolen items had turned up at her Curlew-area home. She told authorities she thought someone was trying to set her up.
Similarly, Schwartz said in an interview, Phillips offered through her attorney to return much of some $1,300 worth of household goods that Phillips purchased for the shelter a day before the furniture theft was discovered. The household goods, as well as some $200 worth of groceries Phillips charged to the shelter, weren’t delivered when they were purchased.
Schwartz said Community Services eventually recovered about three-fourths of the household goods, and is seeking restitution for the rest of the missing supplies.
Meanwhile, another former Ferry County employee – 53-year-old Republic resident Marianne Quaade – is scheduled for trial in July on a first-degree theft charge.
Quaade is accused of embezzling at least $6,612 while she was administrator of the Ferry Conservation District. State auditors said the misappropriations – in 2001 through 2003 – consisted of unauthorized salary, expense reimbursements and sick leave benefits.