Cheryl
Looking back I realise that Cheryl, Kuma's original mother wanted Kuma dead. It becomes more obvious as I look back further.
Let's go back to March 2011. Cheryl wrote me a handwritten letter saying how happy she was with our gym, with Kuma and our little family, my daughter Shawna and her daughter ABbie. This was the closest Cheryl had to having her own family. Me, Kuma, Shawna and Abbie. We celeberated every Christmas together as a family. Cheryl and I at that time had been best friends and business partners for 23 years. We trusted each other without question. I would never imagine that just two months later Cheryl would betray us all in the biggest way possible.
Now let's put things in perspective
When we first started our consulting company in 1991, I hired Cheryl as one of four employees. Later we hired more employees. Cheryl and I spent every day together and we talked for at least 3 hours a day while I taught her everything she needed to know about being successful as a professional consultant. Cheryl asked me for a small percentage of the company because her father said that she should be part owner. I said no, that she was just starting and if she learned the business and became valuable then I would give her a percentage.
Four years later, I gave Cheryl 49% ownership in our consulting company and changed the name of the company to include hers. We worked very well together because we complimented each other. I was good at designing, creating, negotiating and understanding people. Cheryl was good at getting things done. She later learned how to handle difficult confrontations and she was always good at working with people at all levels. With time, Cheryl took on more of the responsibilities of finding new work and running the projects. I took more of a back seat because for the amount of work we were doing, I wasn't needed as much. This is how it progressed. I basically ended up staying home with Kuma and Cheryl went out on the road doing the jobs.
Projects were becoming more of the same but also were becoming more difficult. We were working with companies to help them become more efficient, but because there were less easy ways to do this, changes became harder to implement and we met with more resistance. It wasn't the work that was hard, because we were still the only company in the industry that could accomplish this. It was the executives and managers that were becoming more difficult to work with.
My answer then was to start talking to the real owners of the companies and not the presidents or executives and CEO's. It was time to talk to the people who had a real stake in whether these companies saved money or lost money. We then started to focus on the financiers, the financial owners of the companies. This is when Cheryl met with Health Care Reit.
As a trial, we asked them to give us their worst running facilities. They did. They gave us two properties that they wanted to write off and dispose of. If we were able to take them from a loss to a profit in their operating expenses then they could sell them for more.
This is where Cheryl met Eileen Yurek the Executive Director of the facility in California. At first Cheryl didn't like Eileen and told the owner that Eileen was the cause of his problems, that Eileen was dishonest and was lying to him and heryl suggested he fire Eileen. Cheryl said that Eileen lied so blatenly that she couldn't believe that the owner couldn't see through her lies. She lied about operations, occupancy numbers and about what they were doing. And yet the owner didn't have a replacement so he did not fire her.
With time, Cheryl finished the project in California but negotiated a really poor maintenance agreement. For $5,000 a month, Cheryl would make weekly phone calls to follow up on the operations with Eileen and with the finance officer and once every three months, she would fly out to California at our expense for free to follow up. Considering that Cheryl was being paid $10,000 a week plus all expenses at other clients, this was a really bad set up. I didn't like it but Cheryl wanted to do it.
Later in April and May 2011, Cheryl started not coming home and staying away for up to 3 weeks at a time. We were up in Montreal. I was running the gym and training and Cheryl started spending more time in her home in Florida.
Cheryl then started texting back and forth to Eileen and said that the client was saying that she was texting like a teenager. I asked Cheryl what was going on. She said nothing. I asked her if she was developing a relationship with Eileen and she said they were just friends. One thing that Cheryl and I had was complete honesty with each other, so if she said there was nothing going on, then I believed her.
Cheryl started buying airplane tickets for Eileen to fly in for the weekend from California to Florida and charged it to her expenses. Again, she said that they were just friends and that Eileen was married with children.
Crossing the US border
A border agent wrote in Cheryl's file that she lied about her intentions in the US. She was denied entry once and asked to come back with more paperwork. When she came back she was asked if she was ever refused entry, she said no because she felt she was to come back with more paperwork. The agent asked her again and said that her anwer was very important. She told him that last time she had incompete paper work and had to come back but didn't feel she was refused. He then put in her file that she lied and every time she crossed she was held up and interrogated for two to three hours.
Finally at one time Cheryl was refused entry under her visa and told to wait six months before applying for another type of visa. Cheryl went nuts. I said to her to just wait out the six months and stay here in Canada, be with her dog and train at the gym and maybe we can find some work in Canada. But, Cheryl became frantic beyond any reason, she just had to get back into the US. She wanted to go back and try again the next day. I told her she was not prepared, to stay and read up on all the regulations. She went anyway and was refused again. She came back and stayed in her room on the internet for two weeks. She tried again and this time tried to change her visa status. I told her that she would just perjur herself if she did that but she didn't listen. They refused her agian and said if she tried to come back they would arrest her. Cheryl became very unreasonalbe instead of relaxing and spending the time at home. I could go out to the jobs instead.
June 9 2011 - and $13,740 from my personal checking account
We had one of our biggest competitions at the gym. Cheryl was the head judge. Kuma sat right beside Cheryl as she judged. At the end, Cheryl smiled, shook hands and stood in pictures with everyone. And all this time she was planning a huge betrayal.
The next morning after the competition, Shawna, Abbie, Kuma and I went to the gym to start the clean up. Cheryl said she would follow us shortly and help out.
Instead, Cheryl went to the bank and emptied $13,740 from my personal account which I gave her access to. She took $5,000 in US cash, some Canadian cash then the rest in bank drafts. She went home packed two suitcases and got in a taxi to go to the airport. We were still waiting for her at the gym and would not have know had she not texted Shawna by mistake saying that she was eating a sandwich and on her way to the airport. She was in effect reportting to Eileen like a burglar after a heist to say that she got away with everything and was on her way. Cheryl flew to Toronto where she probably arranged to have her parents drive down from Collingwood to pick her up. All arranged like a planned out bank robbery only it was a betrayal and theft from her family from her best friend who trusted her completely. Cheryl did this with no conscience.
She left behind a note saying, "I love you but I must move on".
Cheryl then filws corporation documents resigning as director of our consulting company and also as director of the gym corporation. She also disappeared from Facebook where she had good friends.
The outstanding $50,000 check
Cheryl said that we should be getting the last check from a client of $50,000 and when we do, she will send it to me. When she did reeive the check somehow she cashed it and then said she would keep half of it herself and only give me half of the check. I told her that what she was doing was illegal and that she still owes me the the other $25.000.
Cheryl after resigning from our company kept working with our biggest client Health Care Reit and she still received checks from the California company were Eileen worked. Stealing this client for herself was huge. We had worked with them for two years now and they made a major change. They went from just financing operations to buying operations and becoming operators. They bought 5 of the biggest operations and instantly became the biggest operators in the industry. They now needed more consulting help from us than ever. They needed help in finding ways to bring these companies together under one operatiion and finding ways to make them more efficient. This would have been our biggest project in our 23 year history. And this is where Cheryl decided to resign and take this client herself.
Ce Consultants, LLC in Tres Pinos, California
Eileen Yurek set up this company in 2011 and most likely Cheryl became an employee. Ce probably standing for Cheryl Eileen was their plan all along of how Cheryl would betray me and start working with our clients under a different name and bill invoices to a US company. Cheryl changed her email adress and added the ce to the end of it as well probaly as a tribute to Eileen.
For now Cheyl and Eileen Yurek have gotten away with their scheme. Cheryl sold her house in Sarasota, Florida and is laying low in the US under her new arrangement.
Kuma and I lived very frugally for the past three years. I did not work because I wanted to and needed to take care of Kuma. Kuma suffered because we didn't have money. If I was able to work and have someone stay with Kuma while I was away, Kuma would have gone to the vet much earlier and would have had an MRI done to find out what was wrong in her brain long before she would have developed her problems. I did not take Kuma to the vet for two years because we couldn't affort it. And all this time, Cheryl owed us money that she had taken and said that she would send then later changed her mind.
Cheryl was Kuma's mother and in the end, Cheryl was the one that told them to kill Kuma when she was still a healthy girl and just needed more time to recover. And Cheryl is the one who made to the unforgivably stupid knee jerk reaction to pay off the vet bill and stop all of Kuma's medication and treatment. Cheryl caused Kuma to go back into continuous seizures and to die a horrible painful death.
When I told the vet that Kuma woke up, she said she knew she would. When I told her how horribly she died, she said, "I'm sorry you had to see that". That was it. Not sorry that she caused it, just sorry that I had to see it. She was really sorry I guess that it didn't happen earlier so she could have killed Kuma before I got there like Cheryl wanted her to.
The more I look back, the more I see clearly what happened and why.
Kuma was innocent. She loved her life and did everything she could to live. Kuma had a very strong heart and strong life force. Kuma did not deserve this. I should have protected her from the vet and from her mother.