Source: http://sdranchcoastnews.com/CMV%20Pages/CMV_TP2.html
By Ian S. Port
Assistant Editor
More than $8,000 in proceeds from a book fair went missing at Del Mar Heights School last month — an incident that San Diego Police are investigating as possible embezzlement or theft.
An envelope containing the missing funds — $8,701.18 in personal checks and cash — disappeared from the desk drawer of an office assistant the week of Jan. 23, according to Heights Principal Wendy Wardlow. The envelope contained proceeds from a book sale, including about $5,400 that the school still owes to Scholastic, Inc. There was no sign of forced access to the drawer.
“There should have been better oversight, and mistakes were made,” Wardlow said. “We just can’t imagine that anyone would take something like this.”
After a district investigation failed to recover the missing envelope, San Diego Police were notified and are now investigating the matter, according to spokesperson Monica Munoz. She said the detective working the case has “no leads.”
“We truly aren't sure what this is: theft, loss or embezzlement,” Munoz stated in an e-mail. “All we know is there was several thousand dollars in a desk, and when the secretary went to retrieve the money it was gone. We know it was not a burglary.”
Del Mar Union School District Superintendent Tom Bishop said he was “disappointed” at the loss.
“It’s kind of a sad story for us,” Bishop said.
He said administrators are trying to file insurance claims for some of the lost money, but said it would be a month before they would be answered.
Wardlow said the envelope with the money went into the locked drawer Dec. 20, the last day before the school’s winter break. It was removed, partially counted and returned to the drawer by an office assistant Jan. 7.
District policy dictates that the money be stored in a safe. But Wardlow said the Del Mar Heights safe was not in a place where the assistant could count it, so she temporarily kept it in a desk drawer.
Bishop said he was told of the missing funds after Heights staff spent days searching for the envelope. He called San Diego Police to the incident Jan. 25.
So far, none of the missing checks have been cashed. Wardlow said she hopes the money may simply turn up missing. But if it doesn’t, she said, students won’t feel the error.
“It will not come out of anything that will go to our children,” she said.
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