Posted on 05/04/2007 12:42:14 PM PDT by Incorrigible
By HOLLY DANKS And MELISSA NAVAS Thursday May 03, 2007
![]() Teacher Elizabeth Logan is accused of stealing a third-grader's coat and trying to sell it on eBay |
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HILLSBORO, Ore. "I told her, 'Be sure not to lose this coat,''' the third-grader's mother remembers reminding the girl.
"It's expensive, and I usually didn't let her wear it to school. But it was cold.''
The 8-year-old promised. But on Jan. 10 she came home in tears. She had become warm during recess on the Jackson Elementary School playground and took off her gloves and the $114 navy blue Columbia Sportswear Tectonite coat.
When she returned without the coat, her teacher immediately sent the girl to look for it. The gloves were where she had left them, but not the ski jacket her grandmother had given her.
"A staff member found her crying by the lost-and-found,'' the mother said.
The jacket would turn up, but only after the girl's mother tracked it to an eBay auction and took her suspicions to police. On Friday, Elizabeth Lucinda Logan, a Jackson Elementary teacher, will be in court. She faces charges of stealing the coat and trying to sell it.
The girl's parents asked that she not be identified in this story because of their concerns about their children who still attend the school.
Two days after the coat disappeared, the girl and her mother blanketed the school with fliers showing a photo of her wearing it. For days, they searched classrooms, checked the school's lost-and-found boxes, asked teachers and staff whether anyone had seen the jacket.
"Things don't disappear into thin air,'' the mother said. "I just wanted an explanation. I just wanted the coat back.''
An avid online shopper, the mother decided to check out eBay to find a replacement.
"I was scanning them on the off chance that it was there,'' the mother said. "It was just a gut feeling.''
What she found Jan. 18 was like a punch to the gut, she said.
The photo of the jacket that had been auctioned for $46 first caught the mother's eye. When she opened the site, she realized that the 7/8 size, colors and model perfectly matched her daughter's missing coat. Digging further, she saw the seller was from Hillsboro and the jacket was posted for sale the day after her daughter's disappeared.
The seller's eBay ID matched a name on the Jackson School Web site.
The mother made an appointment with the principal on Jan. 22, when she presented ``all the coincidental information.'' Mysteriously, the jacket reappeared at the school that morning, ripped to pieces.
Police were called and took up the case. Investigators connected the eBay account to Logan, a Jackson Elementary first-grade teacher.
Logan, 41, will be arraigned Friday in Washington County Circuit Court on a secret grand jury indictment. The teacher was arrested Feb. 6 and cited for theft by receiving and criminal misuse of a computer.
In a prepared statement, Krista Shipsey, Logan's private attorney, said: "Ms. Logan deeply regrets the impact that this allegation has had on her community, especially the children at Jackson Elementary. She has been a devoted and caring teacher for 20 years and truly misses working with her first-graders. Ms. Logan has been devastated by this allegation.''
Lt. Michael Rouches, Hillsboro police spokesman, said Logan told investigators she found the jacket in the school's lost-and-found bin and was auctioning it on eBay until her dog tore it up. Rouches said Logan has made more than 1,000 eBay transactions.
She was still selling Wednesday under the screen name logan6921, with a 99.9 percent positive feedback rating.
Logan told police she routinely buys bulk clothing at Goodwill for $1.39 a pound, goes through the pile for hidden treasures and sells what she can on eBay.
Hillsboro School District officials said Logan was placed on paid leave Feb. 7, the day after her arrest.
Nicole Kaufman, district spokeswoman, said administrators are conducting their own internal investigation.
Logan began teaching in the Hillsboro School District in 1987. She started at Jackson Elementary in 1998, and was earning nearly $69,000 a year when she went on leave.
Jackson School principal Janis Hill said she made a "measured decision'' to call or meet with only the parents in Logan's 25-student class to tell them the teacher was on paid leave during the investigation.
Leana Garrison, whose 7-year-old son, Nate, is in Logan's class, said parents were left in the dark about the reason for Logan's leave.
Since Logan's departure, Garrison said, her son is not as excited about school.
"He's constantly writing to her,'' Garrison said. "He just misses her and really liked her as a teacher.''
Hill said school counselors have been available to students to help cope with emotional stress since Logan left.
"First-grade teachers are kind of like the princess, the queen, mom rolled together,'' Hill said.
(Holly Danks and Melissa Navas are staff writers for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. They can be contacted at hollydanks(at)news.oregonian.com and melissanavas(at)news.oregonian.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Dear Killborn,
“Good Lord, they gave all the good teachers I know a bad name!”
Indeed! It’s the 90% of teachers like this that give the other 10% a bad reputation!
sitetest
Thanks for the pic. Yes, clearly, guilty! :)
The kind that should NOT be a teacher.
What an idiotic statement. Like the rest of the school doesn't know about it? And who the parents of the child whose coat got stolen are, especially after they posted fliers about the missing coat all over the school.
This *Let's keep everything hush hush* routine makes me sick. Too much covering up of the wrongdoer's actions. If I were another parent and had kids in her class, I'd want to know about this.
That wage she makes - well no wonder she is stealing- she only makes 383 dollars per school day—180 X 383= 68,940
Good teachers should quit. Stop enabling a corrupt institution. Then apply your efforts to closing these cesspools down, and opening private schools.
Lenscrafters is really hyping these rectangle/square glasses hard. They're ugly and no amount of glossy paper will make them flattering on anyone.
Now if my doc or attorney was only making 69K a year, I'd worry!
Hope she saved up a bunch - she's gonna need it to pay for legal fees. Creepy woman, lifting a kid's coat!!
70K to work 9 and a hlaf months! with no on call duties, nice vacations around the holidays and a true pension!
***Lotta good that did the mom, reporting it to the principal. If there were some way to verify it, I would bet tons of money that he gave the teacher the heads-up.
Kevmo, you would lose that bet. The principal was the one that decided to contact the authorities when she was presented with all of the information the mother had gathered. Also, the mother has stated how pleased she has been with how the principal has handled the situation.
Unfortunately, a few dozen parents have sided with the teacher even though they know she admitted taking the coat from the lost and found. Other reports state that the coat was only missing for 20 minutes before the child went back onto the playground to retrieve it. Her gloves were still there, but the coat was gone. The auction was started the very next day. The poor kid never had a chance to get her coat back. How sad these parents can’t or won’t see who the real victim is here. How would they feel if it was their child?
This *Let’s keep everything hush hush* routine makes me sick. Too much covering up of the wrongdoer’s actions. If I were another parent and had kids in her class, I’d want to know about this.
This sounds like a no win situation for the parents. If they go public, they’re vindictive and media-hounds. If they stay anonymous, they are hiding something. Why not err on the side of caution? Yes, the community is most likely aware of who the family is and anyone who wants to do a little digging can get their names. But remember, it went National! Would you want your child’s name and face published all over the internet? I don’t think it has as much to do with the school/parents “threat” as it does with the public at large - who knows what whackos lurk out there...
As far as the parents with kids in her class, they don’t seem to care that she is an admitted thief. Alot of them are supporting her. I’d hate to see how these kids turn out in about 15 years.
As the years go by, we see that a lot more occupations are getting the lawyer treatment.
Thanks for the extra information. This teacher had help, just not the principal.
I really have a hard time believing the OTHER parents of this class don’t see how their defending a thief warps their children’s sense of right and wrong.
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Kevmo, you would lose that bet. The principal was the one that decided to contact the authorities when she was presented with all of the information the mother had gathered. Also, the mother has stated how pleased she has been with how the principal has handled the situation.
***I don’t see anything here that verifies one way or the other whether or not the principal gave her the heads up. If the mother “stated how pleased she has been with how the principal has handled the situation”, what do you think she would state if she found out that the principal did give the teacher the heads up?
I read about this last week and it has to be one of the most bizarre stories. This woman is sick! To top it off she is teaching. WHY??
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