Colleen Hudson

Prosecutor hit with illness



By RUTH HEIDE

ALAMOSA — Salmonella halted a court hearing on Monday to determine restitution owed in a Splashland embezzlement case.

District Judge Pattie Swift had already scheduled the hearing on former Splashland manager Colleen Hudson’s theft case five times since December of last year and on Monday was forced to set a sixth hearing date - this time because of salmonella.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Larry Orr, who was handling the restitution hearing for the prosecution, had been out sick since last Wednesday but felt he had recovered sufficiently by Monday’s hearing date to participate in the hearing. By mid-morning, however, the prosecutor was feeling dizzy so Swift rescheduled the restitution hearing once more.

The new date is Wednesday, April 9. Orr said he still had two witnesses to call and Public Defender Alex Raines said he would call Hudson to the stand. Orr began questioning witnesses during a March 19 hearing but ran out of time with first witness Certified Public Accountant Cassandra Martinez so the judge continued the hearing until March 31.

Hudson, 42, served a 120-day jail sentence on a theft charge dating to her employment as Splashland swimming pool’s manager in 2006. Hudson has paid $14,600 in restitution and is contesting further restitution requested by the Splashland Hot Springs board.

Splashland officials maintain that restitution owed is $25,769.

Before Orr’s illness brought a halt to the Monday restitution hearing former long-time Splashland manager Judy Crisco testified about how she helped the board arrive at that $25,769 figure. She said she spent more than 120 hours helping to determine how much was missing and where. Splashland paid Crisco $1,000 and Marge Martinez $1,000 to reconstruct the books. The $2,000 is part of the restitution requested from Hudson.

Crisco testified about petty cash funds not supported by receipts, deposits that never made it to the bank, missing tools and gas expenses that appeared excessive.

Crisco said in reviewing the finances she was troubled by the amount of cash missing with no documentation to back it up. She said she and Martinez went through every single daily sheet to try to match up cash, checks and deposits.

“We saw there was missing money and in Colleen’s handwriting it would explain what it was for and there wouldn’t be always receipts to go with it,” Crisco said.

In one case, Crisco said, a deposit slip was filled out listing both cash and checks, but the deposit was never made. Two weeks later those same checks showed up on a later deposit. “It was my opinion that what happened was the cash was held aside and checks were being used to make these deposits,” Crisco said.

“More and more deposits simply were not made so there was missing money,” she added.

“We really tried hard to always give her the benefit of the doubt,” Crisco said.

Splashland did not seek restitution for some items, she said. She gave an example of a great deal of money spent on pizza with only a few slices of those pizzas sold at the swimming pool. “My question was who was eating the pizza and who was making a decision to keep purchasing it when it was losing money every time,” she said. Crisco said when she was pool manager she might buy pizza to sell at the pool when a big busload of customers was expected but that would be the only time.

Splashland is not seeking restitution for excess pizza purchases Crisco said. “We felt that was mismanagement, a very bad decision, but we did not feel we could call that theft,” she said.

Crisco explained in detail how she arrived at excessive gas expenditures for which Splashland is seeking restitution. She said the pool purchased almost 600 gallons of gas during the season Hudson was manager but could find justification for only about 100 gallons and that included quite a bit of latitude toward Hudson.

Crisco also talked about missing tools some of which were subsequently found at the pool or recovered from Hudson’s house. The restitution sought for tools not recovered is $143, and Crisco said Hudson is not disputing that amount.