Opponents to the leadership of the Issaquah Valley Senior Center went on a three-pronged offensive last week as a lawyer representing six former and current members began sending letters to the center’s attorney and the city of Issaquah’s elected leaders.

In an initial letter sent Aug. 13, Renton attorney Inez Petersen demanded under threat of lawsuit that center leadership retract and apologize for claims she said were made against her clients in the senior center’s newsletter, including a claim that “a group of seniors bull[ied] a vulnerable senior to death.”

“Every paragraph of every page of the June 30th Newsletter [sic] is permeated with libel,” Petersen wrote.

That letter was followed by subsequent letters sent Aug. 16 to Mayor Fred Butler and the Issaquah City Council requested that the city take measures to protect the senior center’s assets and rescind no trespass orders issued against Issaquah woman Regina Poirer and former center board member David Waggoner.

Petersen is representing Poirier, Waggoner, David Kappler, Gregory Wagner, Colleen Perry and Toni Patterson in the case.

Two members banned

The letters are the latest development in a conflict between Petersen’s clients and the center’s leadership that some involved say has simmered for years. But the situation boiled over earlier in 2015 with the issuance of no trespass orders to Poirier and Waggoner, banning them from the senior center.

Poirier was indefinitely banned Feb. 3, under allegations of elder abuse and “causing problems with others.” Waggoner was banned in April for alleged harassment.

The allegation of elder abuse against Poirier stems from claims that she attempted to take advantage of late senior center member Lee Scheeler, who had dementia, according to statements made by Scheeler’s daughter-in-law in an affidavit dated May 4. Peggy Scheeler claimed in the affidavit that, after befriending Lee Scheeler in 2012, Poirier unsuccessfully attempted to take material gains from the relationship that included power of attorney, ownership of his house and attempts to persuade him to purchase her a new car.

“My father-in-law … was a proud man but was also confused and afraid,” Peggy Scheeler said in the affidavit. “He wanted nothing to do with Regina Poirier and requested continued protection from her.”

In the months following Poirier’s ban, Peggy Scheeler said, Poirier and several of Petersen’s other clients repeatedly contacted Lee Scheeler and urged him to “change his story.”

Lee Scheeler died April 21. David Adler, an attorney who has been retained by the Issaquah Valley Senior Center, said the cause of death was a heart attack.

“The cause of the heart attack is what is an open question,” he said.

An April 16 affidavit — relating to Waggoner’s ban and on which the name of the person making the statement was redacted from the copy provided to the Reporter — stated that Waggoner had used a birthday party at the senior center as a forum to make claims against executive director Courtney Jaren. Those claims included that Jaren had made up lies to support Poirier’s ban, that she had been fired from her previous position at the Forest Grove Senior & Community Center in Oregon and that similar negative information had been withheld from members by the senior center’s board of directors at the time of her hiring.

Both statements against Poirier and Waggoner were notarized by Lauren Pace, an employee of the senior center.

In a third statement given by Issaquah VFW member Joel Estey to city utility manager and notary Heidi Nagler, Estey characterized Waggoner as “overbearing, pushy [and] aggressive” in interactions with other VFW members and in general. Estey further stated that Poirier had contacted him in March 2014 about placing Lee Scheerer in veterans’ housing. Estey declined to discuss the matter with her since she had no power of attorney, he said.

A question of money

But Petersen is arguing the allegations of elder abuse were a ruse to silence Poirier’s questions about the senior center’s finances. The second reason for Poirier’s ban, given in her no trespass order, is a clear sign, she said.

“Elder abuse is covered by an RCW,” Petersen wrote the mayor and city council in response to the reasons for Poirier’s ban. “But ‘causing problems with others’ must be from the BCW, the Bullsh*t Code of Washington.”

In one of her letters, Petersen asked city officials to examine the senior center’s finances. The attorney suggested impropriety in executive director Jaren’s and the board’s use of center funds, going so far as to draw parallels to a 2014 case in which a Ventura, California senior center director was accused of misappropriation of public funds.

However, Petersen used money on the books to support her claim, using the center’s 2014 budget to point out nearly $158,000 spent on payroll versus nearly $6,000 on programs for seniors.

“I maintain it is not ordinary and reasonable if only 2.8 percent of the center’s funds are going directly to seniors,” Petersen told the Reporter.

She also highlighted the senior center’s 2015 grant application to the city for funds, which included a special note stating “It is not in the interest of the City of Issaquah to become involved in the direct management or daily affairs of any 501 C 3 [sic] to which it provides grant funding.”

Allegations of libel

In the months following the bans, supporters of Poirier and Waggoner repeatedly contacted elected officials and city staff, urging them to investigate the senior center’s use of city money.

Senior center staff, the board and their supporters ran their own counter-campaign, placing posters in the senior center and showing up at the same public meetings as detractors.

The tit-for-tat came to a head with the publication of the senior center’s June 30 newsletter. The newsletter included a letter signed by Jaren stating that the senior center was in no danger from the ongoing controversy.

But Jaren’s letter was followed by a further, unsigned letter that accused “about ten citizens of Issaquah and neighboring communities” of a false information campaign against the center and made further allegations of sabotage, theft from other seniors and the aforementioned claim of bullying a vulnerable senior to death.

Though the letter does not explicitly name names, Petersen said that offered no anonymity to her clients within the context of recent events. She demanded the letter be retracted and that the senior center devote a future newsletter to an apology; if the senior center doesn’t do so, she plans to file a libel lawsuit, she said.

But Adler, the center’s attorney, said Petersen doesn’t have a case.

“If there’s no names, there’s no libel,” he said.

The unsigned letter instead served as an important warning to the senior center’s existing members about the possibility of danger, Adler said. The senior center acted to protect one of its members and the affidavits against Poirier were an important element of the case being ignored by Petersen, he said.

“I don’t think she’s giving much credence to these policies … or the factual basis of this process,” Adler said. “So if someone doesn’t like what they did in regard to Lee Scheeler, as far as Ms. Scheeler’s concerned, not enough people did enough.”

Adler concluded by saying he was still formulating a response to Petersen’s letter threatening lawsuit.