The Sidebar

Once a self-described guardian of our nation, now governing a San Marcos, CA, mobile home park and a key defendant in the Melongo case, Carol J. Spizzirri was the subject of a blistering 2010 San Diego Reader expose by veteran reporter Don Bauder

In Part I, I reported that, in response to motions to dismiss filed by defendants (including IL Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County Sheriff, and a Schiller Park cop), federal judge John Z. Lee issued a June 9 order allowing Annabel Melongo's wide-ranging civil rights case to move forward.

source

Here's what Ms. Melongo's attorney, Jennifer Bonjean (who practices in Illinois and New York), wrote me in a June 10 e-mail response to my request for a reaction comment:

We are very pleased with the court's order. The take away is that none of the defendants, including the prosecutors, have been released at this juncture. This means that all the named defendants have to participate in discovery which will allow us to determine how this travesty of justice happened and who is fundamentally responsible. Carol Spizzirri has been served and I will be filing a motion for default judgement against her.

Via Cornell University Law School's Legal Information Institute:

In civil actions in federal court, either party may make a pre-trial motion for summary judgment. To succeed in a motion for summary judgment, a movant must show 1) that there are no disputed material issues of fact, and 2) that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

When considering motions for summary judgment, judges view all evidence in the light most favorable to the movant's opponent. As used here, "material issues of fact" refers to any facts that could allow a fact-finder to decide against the movant. If the motion is granted, there will be no trial. The judge will immediately enter judgment for the movant.

Click here for my compilation of media reports about the Melongo case. See my previous item for Judge Lee's concise telling of what Bonjean called "this travesty of justice."

Click here for my compilation of media reports about Spizzirri and her tainted, now-defunct Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) first aid training nonprofit, reportedly the target of an ongoing investigation for the "possible $9 million misappropriation" of federal and state funds being conducted by -- wait for it -- the office of Spizzirri's co-defendant in the lawsuit, IL Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

FYI, for about a decade my father was SALF's "medical adviser" and he had an affectionate relationship with Spizzirri until her group reportedly canned him in 2007.

ONE LAST THRILL: Spizzirri and my then 84-year-old pa perhaps doing a demonstration of mouth-to-mouth CPR at the 2005 U.S. Conference of Mayors annual conference, Washington, D.C. (video here)

Last year The Sidebar was first to report Annabel Melongo's federal lawsuit against Cook County State's Attorneys, Sheriff Tom Dart, and other county officials.

Looks like I'm first again with the amended complaint filed yesterday by Melongo and her attorney Jennifer Bonjean which includes the complete timeline of the case, including the almost two years she spent in jail for posting recordings of benign phone conversations on the Internet, the result of being prosecuted under a statute that has been overturned as unconstitutional by the IL Supreme Court.

The 21-page document also details the roles of Carol J. Spizzirri and her Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF); the organization's relationships with current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, and former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman; ABC7 reporter Chuck Goudie's SALF exposes; the $9 million in tax dollars awarded to SALF; and much more.

Page down to view. Click here to download a copy.

(Circa 2005) Front row: former SALF Director of Communications Ciprina Spizzirri and her mother, Carol J. Spizzirri; Back row: former Maywood, IL mayor Ralph Conner,* former Palatine, IL mayor Rita Mullins, former SALF Public Affairs Representative Dane Neal

The complaint also takes aim at the felony computer tampering charges filed by Spizzirri against Melongo on October 31, 2006. Almost eight years later, that case appears to be headed to court, according to the website tracking Melongo's cases (click and page down).

If/when that case goes to trial, presumably Spizzirri -- who reportedly now lives in a mobile home park in San Marcos, California -- will be obligated to testify.

Click here for a compilation of media reports about the Melongo case.

Click here for a compilation of media reports about Spizzirri and SALF.





* 7/4/14 update: A previous version of this item identified former SALF Operations Director Vince Davis as the cowboy wearing the duster coat in the photo. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Davis -- seen in the video clip below escorting Carol Spizzirri when she freaks out and flees the room mid-interview -- informing me that Mayor Conner (who died in 2010) dressed up as the cowboy. 

I regret the error and I appreciate Davis -- whose June 10, 2007 e-mail about U.S. Sen. Barack Obama helping to fund SALF (see below) -- was reported in a June 25, 2013 Dubuque Telegraph Herald article -- bringing it to my attention -- PMH

Vincent Davis and my father, Dr. Henry J. Heimlich

A story by reporter Erin Murphy in last week's Dubuque (IA) Telegraph Herald, Email links Obama to embattled nonprofit, broke some interesting new ground in the ongoing Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) scandal about the once high-flying, politically-connected organization now under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General.

Before getting to that, check out this clip from The Maneuver Part I, the November 2006 ABC7 Chicago expose by investigative reporter Chuck Goudie that first pried the lid off the SALF can of worms:



The big fella who leads SALF founder/president out of the room and tells the ABC7 crew to "show yourselves out" was Vincent Davis, SALF's "Director of Operations and Military Affairs."

Here's an e-mail Davis received from Eric Brandmeyer, who for years was involved with SALF. The date is about a week after Goudie's fourth and (so far) last ABC Chicago report about SALF aired on May 30, 2007. ("Carrie" is undoubtedly Carrie Viehweg of Staunton, IL, who ran SALF's Springfield office.)

And Davis's response: 

Imagine my surprise to find myself and Chuck Goudie being trashed by Davis as he assures Brandmeyer that Mr. Obama, then a United States Senator, will be shoring up SALF's finances!

As for Davis's June 2007 prediction that Goudie "will likely be out of a job soon," six years later, according to his LinkedIn:


Meanwhile, six months later, via Davis's LinkedIn:



Interestingly, Davis's "Obama e-mail" came to light courtesy of a June 19, 2013 subpoena filed by the defense in the Cook County Criminal Court case, Illinois v. Annabel Melongo, the former SALF employee who in October 2006 was charged with tampering with SALF's computer files after she left the company.

As it happens, the subpoena was issued to ABC7 Chicago (WLS-TV).

UPDATE: On August 7, I received an e-mail from Deputy White House Press Secretary Jamie Smith informing me that she was checking on my inquiry (copied below) and would get back to me ASAP.

Last month, the Huffington Post published Save A Life Foundation Connection Delays (Gery Chico's) Appointment To State Board Of Ed by staff reporter Will Guzzardi that included:

(Chico) wasn't the only one to support SALF: politicians as formidable as Barack Obama and Arne Duncan were close to the group.

Arne Duncan & Carol Spizzirri, 9/2/06 (source)

Per my web page, for years Duncan was indeed close to SALF.

Reportedly he even called SALF founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri "one of my heroes."

Based on the information published last November in the San Diego Reader, you'd think Duncan, now US Secretary of Education, might have set the bar higher.

Spizzirri was a darling of politicians and bureaucrats, although it was a matter of record that she had been convicted twice for shoplifting.

...(It) wasn’t until November of 2006 that ABC 7 News in Chicago, in the first of several broadcasts, exposed more of Spizzirri’s untruthful statements. She had told the station that she was a registered nurse. But the station reported that the institution from which she had claimed to receive her nursing degree had never given her one. A hospital in which she had claimed to be a transplant nurse said she had been a patient care assistant, which is akin to a candy striper.

After the announcer challenged her on the assertion that the accident was a hit-and-run, she walked out of the interview.

Here's that exit scene - take note of the man who leads her off camera.



What about Barack Obama? Was he "close" to SALF, which is reportedly under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General and apparently also by at least one federal agency?

To my knowledge, such a claim is unsupported by the record.

In the HuffPo article, clicking the link attached to his name takes you to this web page from SALF's now-defunct site.



Not much here except some hype about a phone call between Spizzirri and US Senator Obama, and this:

While in the Illinois legislature together, Obama and current Illinois Senate President Emil Jones were always supportive of SALF’s efforts to train Illinois schoolchildren in life-sustaining skills for free.

That's true about Sen. Jones (now retired), who's been called Obama's political "godfather."

For example, on its 2004 & 2005 IRS filings, SALF identified Jones as being on their board.

 
But that's Senator Jones, not his pupil.

Without question, the most intriguing (and potentially damning) allegation originates from Annabel Melongo, a former SALF employee who since April 2010 has been imprisoned in Cook County Jail on a $300,000 bond.

Annabel Melongo

The charge? Two counts of eavesdropping.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez - who, as reported by the NY Times, has a history of abusive prosecutions using the same dubious law - alleges Melongo committed the heinous act of uploading recordings of two mundane phone calls she had with a court clerk to her now-defunct website.


Tax watchdogs and political opponents may also start adding up the megabucks the spendthrift Alvarez and her co-operative judges are costing county taxpayers in pursuit of such pointless prosecutions.

To the discredit of Chicago media, Melongo's story has gone unreported except by a few bloggers, one of whom received a July 6, 2010 letter in which she wrote:

In my subpoenas, there was no direct email between Obama and Carol Spizzirri. However there’s a manager, Vince Davis, who told employees, through an email, about Obama sponsoring a bill to fuel $10 million or so, I don’t recall the exact amount, to the organization. That was the only and first time I ever saw Obama’s name mentioned in the SALF saga. The email in question was sent in response to employees panicking in the wake of the November 16, 2006 ABC investigative report.

If that turns to be true, then it’s a big story in itself.

Indeed. But I've twice asked Melongo to provide me with a copy of the alleged e-mail and twice she's refused.

In an attempt to separate fact from rumor, this week I tried to obtain some answers.

Kori Schulman

On Monday I phoned the White House switchboard, identified myself as a blogger and was steered to a woman named Kori Schulman. We had a pleasant chat during which she explained that my inquiry didn't fall into her job responsibility, but she courteously offered to forward my e-mail to an appropriate staffer in the White House press office.

My e-mail's copied below. In a future post, I'll let you know what happens.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to ask Vince Davis for a copy of the alleged $10 million e-mail, here's his LinkedIn page.

Vince Davis

If Davis looks familiar, it may be because he's the guy who interrupted the ABC7 interview with Carol Spizzirri and escorted her off camera.

 
my 7/25/11 inquiry to the White House re: Barack Obama's relationship to the Save-A-Life Foundation

7/6/10 letter to blogger from inmate Annabel Melongo re: Save-A-Life Foundation, IL politicians, etc.