On December 4, 2000, VLL Enterprises, Inc. opened the doors of a vocational school in Chico, California known as Destiny College.

The three main partners were Rich Varlinsky, Cara Lamumba and myself.  On the legal paperwork, we declared that the officers of the corporation were as follows: President, Rich Varlinsky, Vice President, Steve Lee, Treasurer, Cara Lamumba, Secretary, Carol Lee, and Sgt at Arms, Cindy Varlinsky. It was Rich and myself who were funding the major capital, and since Cara did not have any cash to front the corporation, we still made her a partner, but gave her one-fifth of shares.

Cara was going to be the director of the office related programs in the school, Rich was teaching the sales and marketing programs, and I was teaching the computer technical programs.

When we first opened the doors for business, it was only Rich and myself that actually had some students that were enrolled in any courses or classes at the school. It was unfortunate that Cara did not have any students at the time, as the spare time must have been her enemy (they say that idle hands are the devil's playground).

It was in the spring that I stumbled across some bank transactions that did not seem to "jive" with what we had expected them to be. Come to find out, Cara had been skimming some dollars out of the bank account to pad her normal check, and we had to part company from her at that point.

It may not have been a lot of money to some and a half of a month's salary to another, but it was the principle.  If Cara had come directly to Rich or myself, we would have loaned her the money that she needed, but she chose to steal it from us instead, and that is what was the most hurtful to me, at least.  And to top it off, when we confronted her with the theft, she never apologized or said that she was sorry in any way.

A few years later, she was taken to court and had to serve jail time for embezzling monies from the Girl Scouts of America, when she spent around two and a half thousand dollars of GSA cookie sales money for personal "stuff".

We would have never let her go if she would have apologized and showed some sort of remorse, but obviously there was not a penitent heart there.

Oh, well, that is one of life's obstacles that we must deal with and move on.