The Highland Ice Arena is a Shoreline icon. Located on Aurora Avenue North since 1962, it's one of the last skating rinks still standing in the Pacific Northwest.
Now, it’s nonprofit skating club is on thin ice because $73,000 has recently been stolen.
What makes the loss even more painful is that trusted club parent Suzette Navarro is charged with embezzling all that money from the inside.
When the now-48 year old Navarro volunteered in mid-2014 to keep the books at the Highland Skating Club, board members thought she was just another skating parent with bookkeeping experience. She allegedly told them she had worked, and currently worked, in finance at local car dealerships.
They didn’t know Navarro had spent more than a year in prison 10 years ago for stealing $162,000 from the Lithia Dodge in Renton, where she had served as office manager.
“I can guarantee you, had we known about her criminal history, she wouldn’t have had that position,” Highland Skating Club’s former co-president C.J. Murray said of trusting Navarro as treasurer.
Murray told KIRO 7 the club lost $73,000 while Navarro kept the books.
Navarro was arrested by the King County Sheriff’s Office on July 21 and has since been charged with identity theft and forgery for embezzling the club's money.
Navarro is out of jail awaiting trial and did not return a call on Wednesday seeking comment.
Murray believes the convicted felon volunteered for the job so she could steal. “To start it within three or four months of taking the position, and at that time we had a substantial amount of money, yeah, I do,” she said.
Murray went public with what happened because she wishes she had known of Navarro's criminal history before trusting her with the skating club's now-depleted account. A simple criminal background check would have revealed eight felony counts of theft in the first degree.
“Someone that you trust, that you socialize with, who you’ve had dinner with, whose children are friends with your own child,” Murray said, describing what she considers a painful betrayal. “She might as well have just hit every member in the gut.”
Navarro pleaded not guilty to the charges in early August. If convicted, she could face a maximum sentence of eight years in prison because of her theft history.
Cox Media Group
