Houston — Harris County Precinct 2 constables have opened an investigation in $30,000 allegedly stolen from a high school booster club.
Jesse Salazar, vice president of the Dobie Diamond baseball booster club at Dobie High School, said the number one goal right now is to get that money back.
Salazar said the kids and the community who raised the money deserve justice.
Every year students on the Dobie baseball team are able to make the most out of their season thanks to the help of the booster club.
“We get out there and we ‘drag the sack’ sort of speak, and get out there and just try to get these guys where they’re not coming out of pocket and the parents aren’t coming out of pocket either.”
However, this year may be different after the booster club realized one of their accounts had been wiped clean.
Salazar said the new board conducted an internal audit after being elected and discovered something was wrong.
He said, “We noticed the account was getting hit with a lot of insufficient funds fees and we were trying to figure out what that was attributed to and then we noticed that there was a number of checks that were being bounced.”
Salazar said an account that would normally have up to $10,000 was $600 in the red.
In all more than $27,000 are missing and have not been recovered.
“That’s just the paper trail that we were able to find because we know that we’ve had some cash fundraisers that we didn’t find any deposits for,” Salazar said.
Salazar suspects a former board member may be responsible. He said bills weren’t paid and now they owe vendors money.
“Right now, the trip to Laredo that our varsity team goes to every year is in jeopardy and it’s in jeopardy because we don’t have those funds, the discretionary funds that we normally would have to get out there and pay for that trip,” he said.
For now the Dobie Diamond club is doing its part to raise the money back.
“We’re not letting this set us down,” Salazar said. “We’re not letting this really get to us. We’re trying to put a positive spin on this and trying to where we need to be.”
In a statement, Pasadena ISD said they’re aware of some financial irregularities involving the Dobie baseball booster club and are aware constables are investigating a former member of the club for unauthorized use of funds.
The statement went on to say booster clubs are parent organizations and are not part of the school or district.