A FORMER NAPA, CALIFORNIA, POLICE DISPATCHER WAS CHARGED yesterday with 13 counts of grand theft, one count of forgery and one of identity theft, all felonies, after running a donation scam claiming that she had cancer.
Dannille Vanderpool worked for the Napa Police Dept. for four years and during that time she was honored as Dispatcher of the Year in 2006 and 2007. According to the complaint filed with the court she falsely ran a donation campaign designed to raise money and among the major donors were $11,000 from the Napa Firefighters Assoc. and $5,800 from the Napa Police Officers Assoc. Altogether more than $50,000 was collected, largely through the efforts of the Napa Firefighters who organized a variety of fund raising activities.
In an October, 2007 interview with the Napa Valley Register:
Vanderpool said she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2001 and had five separate relapses, the most recent in May 2007. She told the Register at that time she had surgery and was able to return to work. Vanderpool also claimed then that the cancer was back again a month after surgery, leading to chemotherapy treatments. She said the chemo didn’t stop the disease and that doctors recommended surgery, but then determined her kidneys were failing and that she was too weak for surgery.
She went so far as to shave her head, telling her co-workers that she was “getting ready” and didn’t want to wait until the chemotherapy caused it to drop out. She had a photograph taken of her wearing a blue headscarf covering her bald pate and using it for publicity purposes during the fund drives.
The scam started falling apart when co-workers started noticing some discrepancies in the things she was telling them and the overseers of the bank trust checking account found an unrelated expenditure.
The Napa Valley Register has the STORY.
View one of the fund-raising flyers that contains a large measure of the fable about her “failing” condition HERE (in .pdf)
