The city of Española has closed its investigation on how nearly $6,000 worth of baseball equipment—paid for out of the city’s softball field fund—ended up with the Española Valley High School baseball team. Law enforcement’s investigation, however, is just getting started.
Preliminary documents have been handed over to the Office of the State Auditor, and city police chief Eric Garcia plans to meet with the FBI and the New Mexico Attorney General’s office this week, he said.
Investigators are trying to determine if any of the money used to buy the equipment came from a federal grant or city coffers, Garcia said. In any case, the investigation will be thorough, he said, looking at each purchase requisition submitted by former city Community Services Director Len Cata since his February 2009 hire. Cata was fired two weeks ago.
“What takes the most time is reviewing paper trails,” Garcia said. “It’s best if we’re clear right off the bat, as a municipality. We’re going to turn anything and everything over (to investigators) no matter who it affects.
“The biggest question here is, how did Mr. Cata know what to order?” Garcia said.
But according to Española Valley High baseball coach Anthony Alarid, Cata didn’t make the order. He did.
Alarid said the high school’s athletic fund is depleted. Speaking Monday during baseball practice at the school, he picked up a bucket of tattered baseballs. “Look at that,” he said and then pointed to a stack of old bats. “It’s ridiculous.”
Alarid and the school’s three other baseball coaches, speaking separately, offered essentially the same account.
They said Cata approached them during a meeting at an Española sports bar in February.
“He asked if we needed equipment,” Alarid said. “Absolutely, yeah, we need equipment.”
Coach Rob Garcia said he asked about the protocol of accepting equipment from the city.
“(Cata) said he literally does something like that–in terms of donation of equipment–for one school a year and we would be the school that year,” Garcia said. “We took it at face value. He said he’d order it and inventory it through the city.”
Cata has not responded to numerous calls seeking comment.
Did the coaches question Cata about the deal they said he initiated?
“Not at all,” said Dwayne Archuleta, another baseball coach. “It was something that we needed.”
“I (wasn’t) going to start questioning his funding,” Alarid said. “If he (had) a funding source that helps one school a year, that’s great and we were the lucky recipients. He asked us, we accepted and that’s all there is to it.”
Coach Rainbird Taylor said they were concerned about a lack of safety equipment. And then Cata showed up.
“He just asked, ‘What do you need?’” Taylor said. “We never thought that was going to happen and when it did we were really surprised.”
Alarid, who is the brother of Mayor Alice Lucero, said he later got in touch with Cata to see if the offer still stood. They talked about what the team needed, Alarid said. Cata gave Alarid the number for Keri Roberson, a representative of retailer BSN Sports, Alarid said.
The city had done business with BSN for years, with most orders coming from Cata’s department and going through Roberson, who also has not returned multiple calls seeking comment.
Alarid said Roberson directed him to the company’s website, where Alarid picked items for the team. Alarid ordered $5,950 worth of equipment.
Alarid called Cata to try to check on the order, he said, but never got through to him. After two weeks, Alarid said, he called BSN Sports to see whether the order had gone through and Roberson said it hadn’t. Three days later, he said, Roberson called to tell him it had.
On Jan. 29, Cata submitted a purchase requisition to the city Finance Department. Included in the request were various items intended for the city’s new softball field, including four bleachers costing $5,903.96. An approval of the $16,951.34 request, in the form of a purchase order, was issued on February 7. At that time, the bleachers were still part of the order.
On February 12, Cata placed an order at BSN Sports for all the items included in his approved purchase order except for the bleachers. Instead of the bleachers, Cata added the items requested by Alarid. An invoice from BSN Sports dated March 26 billed the city for $16,997.07.
Alarid said the first shipment was delivered to the city’s Beatrice Martinez Senior Center.
“(Cata) called us one day and said, ‘Hey, your equipment is in,” Alarid said. “We went and picked it up. Len wasn’t there, so this girl showed us where it was and said, ‘This is yours.’”
Alarid said only about a third of the equipment he’d asked for was there. The other items were on back-order or were in transit, he said.
Not long after, Alarid picked up the rest of the equipment at the city’s Lucero recreation center, he said. Most of the boxes were never opened, he said, as it all had to be returned to the city two days later.
The fraudulent order came to the attention of interim City Manager Joe Duran after Roberson, of BSN Sports, called numerous times and wasn’t able to contact Cata, Duran said.
Duran reported as part of his investigation that he received a phone call April 1 from Roberson, who was seeking information about the order. Duran reviewed an invoice provided by BSN Sports against the city’s purchase order and realized something was wrong.
That day, Duran told Cata to come to his office, his report states.
Cata stated that he “offered the equipment and checked it out to the Española High School Athletic Department,” according to Duran’s report. But Cata failed to provide a check-out list.
Alarid said he never was asked to sign out the equipment.
Cata was served April 10 with papers from the city terminating his employment.
The baseball equipment now sits in an office at the Lucero center, unreturnable because some of it has been used and BSN does not accept partial orders for returns.
Taylor, the coach, is a distant cousin of Cata’s, although he said he hardly knew Cata. What makes him mad, Taylor said, is that most of the baseball order was equipment that was badly needed, such as helmets and mitts. He said coaches have taken their own equipment from home and money out of their pockets to make sure the team can play safely.
“I don’t have animosity against (Cata), but he should have been more straightforward,” Taylor said.
“It was like taking Christmas gifts away from the kids. Now they’re left high and dry.”