Food Pantry picking up pieces as investigation continues - Kendall County Now (subscription)

Food Pantry picking up pieces as investigation continues - Kendall County Now (subscription)

Six months after Yorkville police searched the offices of the Kendall County Food Pantry in Yorkville as part of a theft investigation, leaders at the renamed Kendall County Community Food Pantry say they are slowly but surely picking up the pieces.

During a recent distribution day at the pantry, located at 208 Beaver Street in Yorkville’s Fox Industrial Park, families and individuals crowded into a waiting area and then patiently browsed the many food staples available, including meat and produce donated by local grocery stores and other businesses.

Greg Witek, the Little Rock-Fox Fire Protection District fire chief and KenCom dispatch executive board chairman who was named chairman of the new food pantry board when the new board and leadership took over Aug. 11, said 300 to 350 families representing between 900 and 1,200 households walk through the pantry’s doors every month in need of everyday items.

Witek said the issues that occurred six months ago did not impact the clients of the pantry.

“Throughout the entire process, if they didn’t read the papers, they would not know anything had happened,” he said. “So even in the darkest days when there was red ink in the checkbook and the volunteers were barely getting by, they were here every Thursday and the clients came and got food and it all worked out.”

On June 1, Yorkville police executed a search warrant on the pantry, located at 208 Beaver St. in Yorkville’s Fox Industrial Park, and a Yorkville residence following reports by pantry volunteers of suspicious transactions and possible theft of funds from the pantry’s accounts, according to police. Law enforcement sources estimated that between $150,000 and $200,000 was taken from the pantry, but a criminal investigation is still ongoing and Witek said pantry officials are still sorting through documents to determine how much was missing.

A week after the raid, the former executive director of the pantry, Maria Spaeth, and the pantry’s treasurer, Maria’s husband Kenneth Spaeth, both of Yorkville, resigned from their positions at the pantry. On June 21, Maria Spaeth was found dead in her vacation home in Lake Holiday of a prescription drug overdose, according to DeKalb County Coroner Dennis Miller.

A Kendall County judge appointed a special prosecutor to the case in July. State’s Attorney Eric Weis, who previously served on the pantry’s board, said he could be called as a witness in the case. In September, the Yorkville police handed over their completed investigation to Charles Colburn of the Illinois Office of the State’s Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor’s Special Prosecution Unit.

No criminal charges have been filed in the case.

Asked for any progress on the case this week, Colburn wrote in an email, “Nothing I can release at this time.”

Grant Wegner of Yorkville, an attorney and retired judge who sits on the food pantry board, has been acting as legal counsel and liaison between the pantry board and Colburn, Witek said.

“[Wegner] has been in close contact with the special prosecutor, and my understanding is it’s on his list of to-dos, and he’s just got a lot of to-dos,” Witek said. “So he’s getting through the process but he’s not there yet.”

Wegner said the police and prosecutors had all of the organization’s documents, which made it hard for them to begin building a case for civil litigation.

“What initially happened was they went in with a search warrant and took all of our records and documents,” he said. “So before we could pursue any other avenues of recovery, we had to get access to that. So, Colburn and I worked out an agreed court order, where we have some material they can turn over to us and then there are two other boxes of material that they’re going to hold onto because they have evidentiary value, but we’ll have access, we can look at them and things of that sort.”

Wegner said that he expects that “we’ll pursue civil remedies... to whoever we have a legitimate cause of action against.” Secondly, there is potential insurance coverage related to errors or omissions by nonprofit directors, he said, so by reviewing the documents they will be able to figure out if they can file such a claim.

“The third side of it is completely up to Colburn, and if they do have some criminal charges that develop, obviously one of the things that we’ll be pushing for in any kind of plea agreement or sentencing would be that we get some restitution money,” he said.

However, he said it’s “going to take us some time to figure out who and when and how.”

Wegner said the pantry officials have no estimates right now of how much was stolen, just “ideas,” but that there’s “definitely enough to pursue, I can tell you that.”

Wegner said he understands why the criminal investigation has taken so long, noting that the appellate prosecutor’s office covers cases all over the state when a local prosecutor cannot take the case. He said Colburn has “a lot on his plate, and I get that.”

“Colburn’s all over the state; I get it, it takes a bit longer than if it was local,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll move forward on it and we’ll see what happens.”

Witek said the volunteers stuck with the pantry even during the controversies. He said that according to pantry Director Tandy Pinter, volunteer inquiries through its new website, including those who want to do temporary volunteer shifts, have been more than steady.

“There is a record high in terms of people who want to help,” he said.

Witek said church groups, school groups and others will take temporary shifts, and then there are those who come to the pantry and just say they want to help. He gave the example of a 50-something couple who stopped in the pantry in July.

“He had recently retired and they live in Oswego, and said we want to help, and they have been here every single Thursday like clockwork since the beginning of July,” he said. “They’re a part of the family now.”

Witek said it’s difficult to tell how the donations compare, for example, to previous years because the records are not complete.

“The disappointing part of analyzing the finances is that we just don’t have any history to work with,” he said. “There was incomplete record-keeping of the finances before the new board took over, and what was done has this aura of ‘Well, is that all of it?’ And we know the answer is no, it’s not. The stuff that we do have is inadequate and it’s also missing dollars.”

He said the new board has been in the process of building a new budget.

“We’re on our way to building a budget but it will be a slow, slow go,” he said.

Witek said the pantry has paid off most of its debt – except for a truck loan – and has money in the bank.

“There have been a lot of questions about the finances because in the past, every time finances were discussed, the volunteers were told ‘Well, you know, we’re barely making it, we hardly have money for this or that or the other thing,’” he said. “Now, the good news I delivered to them today is, we are a month ahead in our payments to the Northern Illinois Food Bank, that’s our main food source, all of our debt is completely paid off except for a traditional truck loan.”

He continued, “We have several months of cash in the bank, the bills are all paid, it’s a huge blessing. The going commentary for that is we know that all the incoming donations are all making it into the bank and are all being used on bona fide bills. That’s about as delicately as I could possibly say it.”

There is still pain from the incidents, however, Witek said.

“We’ve got 91 volunteers who are all hurting from that whole process,” he said.

Witek said that Maria Spaeth did good work in the county, but that there is a “black mark” on that work now.

“No doubt, over the course of almost 30 years she did some wonderful things for the county, no doubt, and I never want to take that away from her,” he said. “It doesn’t make the bad any less bad. Wonderful stuff got done, but unfortunately it’s got a black mark on it.”

When reached via cellphone this week, Kenneth Spaeth said he could not comment on the investigation or other aspects of the case, but that he wished the organization well.

“All I can say is that I wish nothing but the best for the food pantry,” he said. “It’s just a terrific organization, and I wish nothing but the best for the people that are running it as well as for the patrons. That was something that was near and dear to Maria’s heart and I know she’d want to see it prosper and continue on without her.”

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