Good Works Are the Point, Carona Says

Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona’s nonprofit charity has spent or pledged more than $5 million since its inception five years ago to help thousands of disadvantaged youths, buying bicycles and soccer balls, providing trips to summer camp, and helping pay for college.

Carona said he hopes those good deeds will overshadow and outlive the negative publicity about his Mike Carona Foundation, which he says is off-base and undeserved.

Reports surfaced this week that a federal grand jury ordered the foundation to turn over financial documents as part of a criminal investigation and that the foundation repeatedly put itself in jeopardy of losing its tax-exempt status by missing the state’s tax filing deadline.

Carona, who created the foundation to help curb juvenile delinquency among California’s underprivileged youths, has maintained that the group is not the target of an investigation, nor has it broken any laws.

“At the end of the day, the public should judge the foundation on its ability to help thousands of kids throughout Southern California,” Carona said. “The truth of the matter is the kids who’ve gotten bikes and scholarships and day care ... know they’ve been helped.”

The worst-case scenario, he said, would be if “we have no more money to give to kids.”

Carona, who as co-author of a book described his tough childhood with a mother who drank herself to death, established the Newport Beach-based foundation shortly after he was elected in 1998.

The charity has relied on word of mouth for donations and has only four benefactors, Carona said. He declined to name them.

“We as a foundation have never asked a person for a penny,” he said. “These have all been contributions by individuals without a solicitation -- ever.”

Carona serves as the president and is in the process of selecting a new board.

The founding board included Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, who was fired from the department six months ago and is now facing corruption charges.

Other members were Don Haidl, who resigned as assistant sheriff last month because of the difficulties of dealing with gang-rape charges against his 19-year-old son; Haidl’s sister, Peggy, vice president and secretary; Corey Schlossman, chief financial officer; Los Angeles attorney Richard Robins, vice president; and Stacia Nadelman, vice president.

These directors have stepped down or plan to because of business or family obligations, Carona said.

Carona and Michael Schroeder, who volunteers as the foundation’s attorney, said the charity’s only paid employee is an accountant.

In its first two years, the charity raised $22,000, according to tax forms filed with the state. The next two years, it collected roughly $725,000. Then, last year, the foundation received an anonymous donation just shy of $3 million, on condition that the money be passed through to the Inside the Outdoors Program, run by the Orange County Department of Education.

Under that program, underprivileged youngsters get to take one-day field trips to the wilderness or spend four nights at nature camps. The foundation pledged $2.7 million more to the program for each of the most recent fiscal years.

John Nelson, associate superintendent of the Education Department, said of the 22,400 students in the camp-out program last year, about 6,800 were funded by the charity. The fund also paid the way for 30,000 of the 57,000 students who went on the day trips.

“If we stop receiving this money, the program would shrink. This is a chance of a lifetime for these kids, and it would be a real loss,” Nelson said.

Another recipient is the Hispanic Education Endowment Fund, a fund for Latino students in Orange County. Shelly Hoss, president of the Orange County Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization that houses the money for HEEF, said the money donated by the foundation was put into an endowed scholarship fund for high school graduates interested in law enforcement. The charity’s contributions total $75,000 over three years. The fund has eight students with $1,000 scholarships.

Carona “has made a concerted effort to do wide-ranging outreach to Latino students,” Hoss said. “He is very involved in community issues. He is interested in disadvantaged youth, and this seems like a good fit.”

The Olive Crest group home organization, which provides housing and services for about 500 abused children in Orange County and a total of 4,000 in Southern California each year, has received $50,000 from the foundation in the last three years for scholarships to trade schools or colleges, said Director Donald Verleur.

He added that Carona is “involved in a lot of children’s organizations.... He is an incredible man.”

Carona may be the only head of a law enforcement agency in California with a charity in his own name.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer’s office, which oversees roughly 90,000 charities, could not immediately say whether there are other law enforcement officials sponsoring their own charities.