School Club Treasurer Charged in Embezzlement : Crime: Topanga Elementary booster group says $18,000 is missing. Woman is also accused in unrelated $23,000 theft.

The former treasurer of Topanga Elementary School’s boosters club has been charged with embezzling $18,000 from the organization, authorities said Thursday.

In an unrelated case, Barbara Y. Elliot, 40, of Topanga, also is accused of stealing $23,000 from a West Los Angeles restaurant where she once worked, authorities said.

Elliot has been arraigned on grant theft charges in both cases. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on her own recognizance.

If convicted, she could be sentenced to prison, authorities said.

Elliot allegedly embezzled the $23,000 from the Orleans restaurant in 1992 while keeping books for the owner, Mary Atkinson, said Detective Tim Gipson of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Forgery-Bunco Division.

After Atkinson discovered the money missing, she fired Elliot and contacted police, Gipson said. Elliot was stealing funds from the restaurant and depositing them to her own account at the now-defunct Security Pacific Bank, he said.

Later, booster club members--who had no knowledge of the restaurant matter--noticed money missing from their treasury and became suspicious of Elliot, Gipson said.

They contacted the restaurant and after talking with Atkinson, reported the club’s missing funds to the Sheriff’s Department’s Lost Hills Station. Deputies arrested Elliot on May 3 at her home.

Gipson said his own department’s investigation was winding down at about the same time.

Elliot, a mother of two who has a child at Topanga Elementary, was the booster club’s treasurer for about two years, club officers said.

The theft of the $18,000 occurred between Jan. 1, 1994, and April 30, 1995, authorities said. Elliot wrote checks to herself out of club funds, according to Mike Wilson, a deputy district attorney at Malibu Municipal Court.

Elliot’s attorney, Steven K. Hauser, said he believes Elliot has an emotional problem.

“It’s a problem I’ve seen in people that are having psychological difficulties in their lives,” he said. “In cases like this there is some psychological need to be caught and punished.”

Elliot has paid back all of the money to the booster club, he said, and has begun paying back the restaurant. Meanwhile, he said, she has been getting counseling.

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Dorothianne Henne, booster club president, said she wanted to make sure she had all her facts straight before going public with the allegations against Elliot. She didn’t conclude her own investigation until a couple of weeks ago, she said.

“The truth of the matter is that Barbara’s husband was paying us back, and as long as he was paying us back, I [didn’t want] to put out a statement,” Henne said. “My goal was to get our money back.”

Henne said the organization will now keep a much closer watch on finances, including having two people keep track of donations that come in and bills that are paid. That system was in place before, but Elliot did away with the practice after she became treasurer, Henne said.

“And everything is now in a computer,” she said “We can get a quick report in a second on any information anybody wants.”

The allegations against Elliot have rocked Topanga, a tiny, close-knit, affluent community nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains that prides itself on its highly acclaimed school.

Sandy Savas, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization, said she hopes the incident does not hamper the booster club’s fund-raising efforts.

“If people are jaded by this incident and don’t give money next year, it’s going to be a really sad thing,” she said, adding that her organization is not affiliated with the booster club.

Money raised by the booster club goes toward funding educational programs, such as paying for teachers’ aides, she said.

Elliot is scheduled to appear in court on June 22 in the Topanga case and June 15 on the restaurant charges.