Catholic School Struggles to Forgive Sins of Ex-Leader

It hardly rates a notice in the jaded annals of local crime. But for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ poorest parochial school, located in Boyle Heights near the Pico-Aliso housing projects, it was the ultimate betrayal.

While Dolores Mission School was scraping to buy toilet paper and praying that its payroll checks wouldn’t bounce, its beloved principal was robbing it blind--secretly funneling more than $50,000 into a private account to pay her mortgage and installments on a diamond ring.

Last week, the sordid chapter in the school’s history came to a close when former Principal Angelita Trevizo, 49, was sentenced to more than two years for embezzlement and tax fraud.

But emotions continue to reverberate from the case. Supporters insist that Trevizo was guilty of nothing more than generosity, and that her use of the secret account was meant to reimburse herself for personal money she gave to the school. “She didn’t do it on purpose, to steal,” said longtime friend Karen Bell.

School administrators say that they believe the worst is over. Reluctant to drag up the past, they allow that they’ve had to struggle spiritually and financially to move beyond anger into a realm of forgiveness.

“You know, when you sit back a little bit, it’s sickness,” Rob Smith, a businessman who helped the school trouble-shoot its finances, said during a recent interview at the school. “You have to find compassion for her.”

Trevizo’s attorney declined to comment, saying that he plans to file an appeal.

Trevizo’s husband, Herman, also declined to comment. An internal affairs investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, he was a co-defendant in the case, but the charges against him were dropped because of insufficient evidence. He is on paid leave pending an administrative investigation, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

Located at 170 S. Gless St., Dolores Mission School is affiliated with what is generally considered the poorest Roman Catholic parish in Los Angeles. Down the street from two low-income housing projects, the school’s cheerful purple doors greet students from the mostly Latino neighborhood.

Financial struggles are not unusual at the 230-student kindergarten-through-eighth-grade campus. Nearly 30% of the families can’t afford the $1,100 annual tuition. Survival means fund-raising.

“The school has always struggled,” Pastor Michael Kennedy said in a recent interview. “For any inner-city school, it’s a challenge to stay alive.”

But in December 1995, the challenge mysteriously got worse. Kennedy asked Smith, who owns a leasing business and is on the board of a neighborhood charity, to step in and try to figure out what was going wrong.

“Every week, three teachers were coming to me and saying there was no toilet paper,” Kennedy recalled. “Toilet paper was the buzzword.”

Beginnings of a Betrayal

Little did they know the school’s purse had sprung a leak. In November 1995, records show, Trevizo had opened an unauthorized checking account in the school’s name and listed herself and her secretary, Isabel Cortez, as signatories.

Trevizo, the former principal at nearby Resurrection School in East Los Angeles, had been hired months earlier and immediately threw herself into the job, supporters say.

“When she became principal, the condition of the school was filthy,” said Alex Meraz, whose son was a teaching assistant at Dolores Mission. “I saw her and her husband both on their knees scrubbing. He was doing the toilets, she was doing the classrooms.”

Then there was Trevizo’s rapport with the children. A foster mother, Trevizo was completely focused on the needs of Dolores Mission students--to the point that she insisted on working at a fund-raiser just days after undergoing surgery, said one friend.

“She felt she was doing God’s work to help the poor people,” said longtime friend Bell. “If they were totally horrible people who steal things, they sure tricked me.”

Meanwhile, court records show that Trevizo began moving money through the secret account. After making initial deposits, she wrote a check on the account for $5,000 to her husband, prosecutors said; two days later, the couple used roughly that amount to clear up four months of overdue mortgage payments.

In all, Trevizo deposited $58,544 in checks made out to Dolores Mission--some for tuition--into the secret account. She wrote 281 checks on the other end, including $14,642 to her husband; $5,668 for cash; and $1,763 to pay for an $8,000 diamond ring she purchased after she arrived at the school.

She also paid for a pool cleaning service at her home and meals at a local pizza parlor.

In March 1997, Smith and Kennedy still didn’t have a clue about the account, but they concluded that Trevizo had administrative shortcomings. She agreed with their assessment and made plans to move on, they said, allowing the school to find a new principal for the 1997-98 year.

“We were all on the same page,” Smith recalled. “When we let her go, the three of us cried together.”

In fact, the parting was on such good terms that Kennedy gave Trevizo a glowing letter of recommendation, which stated: “At the present time our school has made a very impressive comeback under the leadership of Mrs. Trevizo.”

But right after Trevizo left, the ugly truth started oozing out. Cortez, the secretary, came forward in June 1997 and told about the unauthorized account. The school called police. The word got out.

“I had trust in her and I believed she would be a person who would never do anything like that,” said Alma Canal, a past PTA president whose daughter is in sixth grade at Dolores Mission. “To do this in a community that is so much in need, it made me angry.”

Kennedy summed his feeling up in one word: “betrayal.”

Others, however, rallied around Trevizo during the trial, which ended in a jury conviction Sept. 29. The same jury deadlocked on charges against Cortez.

Trevizo supporters flooded Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry with an estimated 50 letters, prompting him to remark on the unprecedented showing moments before he announced the sentence Nov. 1.

“I would say that in all the years that I have been trying cases, this is probably the greatest outpouring of support that I have seen for any defendant in any case,” said Perry, who has been on the bench since 1992.

Explaining It Away

Trevizo’s supporters argue that she was a victim of her own generosity, and was only using the account to reimburse herself for personal money she spent for the school. The former principal said the same thing in her own defense as she stood before Perry last week.

“I know I did wrong to open the bank account,” Trevizo said, according to a court transcript. “It was never my intention to hurt anyone.”

But in sentencing her to two years and four months in the California Institution for Women in Frontera, the judge said he couldn’t overlook the “calculated, ongoing nature” of the crime.

He also ordered her to pay $50,000 restitution to Dolores Mission.

“What further aggravates the circumstances of this case is that the victim, the school she was stealing from, was such a vulnerable victim,” he said.

Vulnerable, yes, but now Dolores Mission officials say they are stronger for the turmoil. The crisis forced the school and its new principal, Sister Pat Reinhart, to shore up its finances by creating an advisory board and naming a director of development to help with fund-raising.

They say a fresh flow of money from the archdiocese and groups like the Doheny and Ralph H. Parsons foundations have provided a new coat of paint for the building, new computers, new textbooks and additional scholarships for families in need.

As a measure of how much the school community has moved beyond its hurt, Kennedy said he and others said prayers for Trevizo at Mass the Sunday before her sentencing.

“These are the people whose money was taken, and they pray for her,” Kennedy said. “The people’s faith has really gotten us through. They forgive her.”