6 • The Southwest Portland Post
NEWS
February 2012
SWNI office manager receives 38 month jail sentence for embezzlement
By Lee Perlman
The Southwest Portland Post
On January 20 Judge Youlee Yim
You sentenced Virginia Stromer,
former Southwest Neighborhoods,
Inc. office manager, to 38 months
of incarceration for the theft of
$131,000 from SWNI over the
course of seven years.
Stromer was also sentenced to
60 months of probation after her
release, and to make at least partial
restitution to SWNI.
As part of the restitution, Stromer
returned $1,250 in pay and $2,100
in unused vacation time owed to
her after her abrupt resignation
in October 2010, and pledged to
immediately hand over another
$10,000 held in trust.
Deputy District Attorney David
P. Shen had asked for 57 months
of jail time, while Public Defender
Damien Donnelly-Cole asked that
Stromer serve “less than a year”
in jail.
SWNI Executive Director Sylvia
Bogert testified at the hearing on
behalf of the prosecution. Stromer
gave a statement and her sister
Karen Lee DeSousa, son Jarrett
Stromer and friend Nicholas Carter
testified on her behalf.
After an initial Not Guilty plea,
Stromer pleaded guilty to all charg-
es, and both she and her supporters
conceded that Stromer ’s actions
were wrong. However, they ar-
gued that the embezzlement was
motivated by a compulsion to help
others in a material way that was so
strong it had become a pathology.
“There’s no excuse, no justifica-
tion for what she did,” Donnelly-
Cole said. “She knows what she did
was wrong.” However, he added,
she suffered abuse and “loss of self-
esteem” in her youth. “She never
came to grips with it or learned to
cope with it,” he said.
According to Donnelly-Cole,
“She filled the void by caring for
other people. The thefts were to
continue filling that void by car-
ing for other people, shopping for
them, helping them out.”
“Sending her to prison won’t
help in dealing with the problem,”
said Donnelly-Cole. “She needs
intensive therapy. I understand that
there’s a need for punishment, and
to ensure that this doesn’t happen
again. The best way is probation
and therapy.”
Carter said that he had accom-
panied Stromer to the SWNI office
and “northwest (sic) neighborhood
functions. She seemed to be not just
the go-to person for the office, the
computer, the newsletter, but she
always had time for people.”
According to Carter, “She was
really alive in that atmosphere. She
misses her job and her friends. It’s
tearing her apart. She’d be grateful
for the opportunity to correct her
behavior. There are resources to
deal with her problem. If she could
correct the problem she could get
back out there and help others.”
DeSousa and Jarrett Stromer also
testified to Stromer’s compulsive
charity.
Stromer herself could barely
speak coherent sentences. “Some-
how I could separate in my mind
what I had done,” she said. “I hate
that I hurt Sylvia and caused the
pain I caused.”
Virginia Stromer (Multnomah County
Sheriff booking photo)
Bogert gave a very different per-
spective. “Ginny is a very intelli-
gent and capable person,” she said.
“She knows right from wrong. She
understood and had knowledge of
our project. She knows that volun-
teers often raised money dollar by
(Continued on Page 7)
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