The Advocates Who Weren't

In August 2023, the teachers' union at Evergreen Public Schools went on strike. It was not the district's first labor dispute, and it would not be the last. Jenae Gomes, the district's Chief Operations Officer, led the bargaining team as she had in previous negotiations. The work was grueling — early mornings, evenings, weekends, and the Labor Day holiday. When it was over, Superintendent John Boyd authorized supplemental contracts to compensate the bargaining team for the extraordinary hours they had worked.

Four people received these contracts: Gomes ($13,980), Chief Financial Officer Jennifer Jacobson, Tracy Thompson, and Bobbi Hite. The amounts varied because they were based on each person's hourly rate multiplied by hours worked. Boyd signed all four. This was, he would later tell a detective, the same method he had used at his prior school district. In his words, it was common sense.

The contracts were processed through the payroll department, stamped as received, and paid out. They were authorized under Board Policy #5050, which allows supplemental contracts for work beyond an employee's normal assignment, and under Policy B/SR-4, which grants the superintendent broad authority to develop activities to achieve board goals. There was nothing secret about them. They were district records, subject to public records requests, and they would eventually be requested.

But at the time they were signed, no one raised an alarm. The contracts sat in the district's files, unremarkable, for months.

For eighteen months, nothing happened. Then a second strike changed the math.

In early 2024, a group of parents — including Angie Bunda and Camille Lowman — obtained copies of the four supplemental contracts through a public records request. They brought the issue to the Evergreen School Board at a public meeting. The Columbian, Clark County's daily newspaper, covered the story on March 15, 2024.

The district responded on the record. Supplemental contracts were "not uncommon." The superintendent was authorized to approve them individually. The bargaining team had worked far beyond their normal duties during a contentious strike. Lowman was quoted in the article. The board explained that the superintendent had this authority. The issue was discussed publicly, answered publicly, and the district moved on.

The same day the Columbian article ran, the Washington State Auditor published Report No. 1034406, covering the district's fiscal year that included the contested contracts. The audit found no deficiencies in internal control, no material weaknesses, and no instances of noncompliance. The district would later tell the investigating detective that the four supplemental contracts were included in the specific samples reviewed by the auditor.

For the complainants who would later file a police report, this history presented a problem. The contracts had already been examined — by the school board, by the press, and by the state auditor — and no one had found anything wrong. To make their case, they would need to ignore what had already been established and present the issue as if none of it had happened.

That is exactly what they did.

On June 12, 2025, Kendall Thiemann — an Evergreen Public Schools employee — filed a $4.5 million tort claim against the district. The claim, signed by Vancouver attorney Alan Harvey, focused primarily on allegations about EHS principal Danny Orrantia and claims of retaliation against Thiemann for raising safety concerns. The supplemental contracts were not a central feature of the tort claim. But Thiemann and Harvey were now formally adversaries of the district, with significant financial incentive to damage its position.

On August 26, 2025, the classified employees' union — SEIU Local 1948, representing roughly 1,400 bus drivers, paraeducators, security guards, and maintenance staff — went on strike. The school year was delayed. Once again, Jenae Gomes led the district's bargaining team.

On the other side of the table sat Mindy Troffer-Cooper, the union president. Within days, she would amplify the very complaint designed to remove Gomes from negotiations.

The stage was set. An old, settled issue was about to be repackaged as an urgent criminal matter — filed at precisely the moment it could do maximum damage to the district's negotiating position.

On August 27, Angie Bunda posted on her personal Facebook account: "It's time to call out corruption at Evergreen Public Schools and stop being afraid of a certain toxic administrator with a passion for poisoning our systems." Three days later, she posted images of the four supplemental contracts, calling them "secret payouts" and alleging the school board "will not acknowledge them or look into their legitimacy." This was not true — the board had addressed the issue publicly over a year earlier — but the framing was being constructed.

The issue was not new. The timing was.

On September 2, 2025 — one week into the strike — Kendall Thiemann walked into the Vancouver Police Department's East Precinct carrying a packet of documents. He told Officer Andrea Bauman he wanted to report a violation of public trust by Jenae Gomes under RCW 40.16.020, a statute covering damage, destruction, and falsification of records and fraudulent appropriation of funds.

Then he did something unusual. He refused to answer any questions.

The packet was carefully constructed. It included an email Thiemann had sent to Sergeant Devlin — misidentifying him as the Major Crimes Unit supervisor — along with what Thiemann repeatedly called his own "investigation report," declarations from Bunda and Lowman, and copies of the supplemental contract and district terms of agreement.

Thiemann's "investigation report" was not an investigation. It was a legal argument, dense with statutory references and written in a style that Det. Alie would later describe as "overly verbose with the inclusion of details that appear intended to create an air of unnecessary gravity." It offered two "conclusions," both the same: that Gomes violated RCW 40.16.020. It recommended the matter be forwarded to the prosecutor for charging.

Officer Bauman did what she was supposed to do. She filed a General Information Report — a standard intake document for walk-in complaints. It was not a criminal investigation. It was not an allegation by the Vancouver Police Department. It was a record of what a citizen walked in and said.

That distinction — between a citizen's complaint and a police investigation — would be deliberately and repeatedly erased by the complainants in the days that followed.

One person was named. Four received contracts. The difference was that one of them sat across the table from the union.

What happened next moved fast. Within hours of Thiemann's visit to the precinct, the social media campaign began — and it bore no resemblance to what had actually occurred at the police station.

On September 5, union president Mindy Troffer-Cooper posted Thiemann's complaint online. The district became aware of it only after she made it public. On September 9, Cassandra Muhly-Hempel — an EPS parent and substitute teacher — emailed every local news outlet, SAFS, and school board members with a message titled "VPD Report about Evergreen School District Personnel." The email repeatedly referenced "the VPD report" in language designed to imply the police had independently initiated a criminal investigation.

On September 10, Bunda's EPS Advocate Facebook page posted images of Officer Bauman's report. Notably, she did not post any of Thiemann's attached documents — including her own declaration. Just the police intake form, stripped of context, presented as proof of a criminal investigation.

On September 11, Bunda published an email from Alan Harvey. In it, Harvey characterized Gomes as a "felony suspect" exercising her "Fifth Amendment right to silence" — based solely on the fact that Gomes hadn't answered a single phone call from Officer Bauman. Harvey is a former Clark County Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney. He knew what a felony investigation looks like. This was not one.

The messaging had a clear purpose, and it was not justice. Post after post questioned why Gomes was still on the negotiating team. Why she wasn't on administrative leave. Why the school board wasn't acting. Bunda's email to board members on September 29 made it explicit, noting "two of you running for re-election next month" and asking them to "consider the future cost of the choices you are making."

The VPD's Public Information Officer, Kim Kapp, responded to media inquiries on September 9 with a clear statement: "We took a general information report but there is no criminal investigation." The complainants either did not hear this or did not care. They continued to characterize the situation as a felony investigation with pending charges.

On September 15, the strike was settled. The complaint campaign had run its entire duration.

The VPD said there was no investigation. The complainants said there was. The strike ended before anyone could sort out which version the public was hearing.

Detective Jay Alie is a career investigator. He had been aware of the complaint since early September but had prioritized active criminal cases. The strike resolved. He began working through the evidence.

He reviewed the contracts. He read Thiemann's "investigation report." He independently located the State Auditor's report online and confirmed its clean findings. He read the March 2024 Columbian article. He spoke to Board Chair Jacqueline Weatherspoon, who confirmed the issue had been reviewed with no finding of wrongdoing. He emailed Garrett Williams, the district's attorney, and reviewed the policy documentation. He called John Boyd, who confirmed he had authorized the contracts.

Then he started calling the complainants. This is where the story changed.

On October 15, he reached Angie Bunda. She agreed to a recorded interview. Alie asked her who had written the declaration included in Thiemann's packet. She identified Alan Harvey, describing him as "a friend" who helped. She said they "worked on it together." Alie began walking through the contract language with her, reading the full text of the paragraph she had cited as proof of illegality. Bunda had only ever quoted half the sentence — the half about certificated employees. The other half said "or provisions for special and extended service payments adopted and approved by the board of directors." Bunda seemed confused that Alie was reading the complete text.

He asked if she was aware of the State Auditor's clean report. She was not. He told her it was available online. She said "that would be good information to have, definitely." He pointed out that her own declaration stated, under penalty of perjury, that she had been unable to locate any record where the board approved such payments — yet there was publicly available information addressing exactly that.

Her response was revealing: "If I didn't read that, then that wouldn't be to my knowledge, would it?"

He reminded her that the Columbian article — in which she was quoted — had covered this issue. She acknowledged being in the article. The contradiction sat in the open: she signed a declaration under perjury saying she couldn't find information that existed in a newspaper article she was quoted in.

After the Bunda interview, Alie tried to reach Thiemann. He left a voicemail. Instead of Thiemann calling back, his attorney called — Alan Harvey. The conversation lasted nearly two hours. Harvey advocated the case, mentioned a prior investigation the district had paid for, compared the situation to the Josephine Townsend forgery conviction, and offered his opinion that Gomes "wanted extra money and didn't think she'd get caught."

Alie had tried to interview the person who filed the complaint. He got the person's lawyer instead. The complainant who had refused to answer Officer Bauman's questions now had his attorney answer for him. As Alie noted, this was the same group that had criticized Gomes for not answering a single phone call.

The next day, October 16, two things happened. Bunda sent an email — copied to Chief Price, the PA's office, Lowman, and Thiemann — saying she no longer wanted to speak to Alie or anyone at VPD. She characterized the recorded interview as "accusatory" and said she didn't feel she had "a choice" about being recorded. The recording itself, which Alie referenced, tells a different story.

And Gayle Hutton of the PA's office responded to Bunda's earlier inquiries with a definitive statement: "The intake matter assigned to Anna Klein for review is closed, and no action is being taken." Hutton explained there was no investigation in the original report and therefore no case to prosecute. She directed any future information to the Vancouver Police.

The complainants had been telling the public for six weeks that charges were pending. The prosecutor had just said there was nothing to act on.

They asked for an investigation. When the investigation started asking questions, they stopped answering.

While Alie was conducting his investigation, declarations were multiplying. They arrived in waves, each more aggressive than the last.

The first wave — Bunda and Lowman's declarations, included in Thiemann's original packet — were almost word-for-word identical. Both were co-authored with Harvey. Both contained the same erroneous date: "September 1, 2022" instead of 2025. Both ended with a statement certifying under penalty of perjury that the contents were true and correct. They were not individualized statements of personal knowledge. They were templates.

The second wave was worse. Beginning September 17, identical four-page declarations began appearing — delivered to the PA's office in a folder addressed to Anna Klein, then forwarded back to VPD. All twenty-plus copies were word-for-word the same. They were written in first person — "I became aware that..." — but no individual had written them. They contained language lifted directly from Harvey's published email, including the Josephine Townsend comparison. They opened with a perjury attestation.

Alie began contacting the people who had signed them. What he found was consistent and damning.

Shimea Potter told him she saw the declaration on Bunda's Facebook page, messaged Bunda, and received a copy to sign. She didn't write any of it. She hadn't read the contracts. She didn't know what RCW 9.94A.411 was, despite it being quoted in the document she signed. She said she agreed with "the concept" — but not the specific content she had certified under perjury.

Jodi Cowell, a bus driver, found the declaration in her work mailbox at the bus barn. She signed it without reading it carefully. She thought it was "more like a petition."

David Kerney was a police officer in another Washington county. He was not an EPS parent — despite the declaration beginning with "I am the parent and/or the guardian of one or more children in the Evergreen School District." He had no knowledge of Gomes, the contracts, the VPD report, or any of the underlying facts. His mother-in-law, an EPS bus driver, had given him the document. He thought it was a petition.

Corey Sutcliffe's wife is a bus driver. He signed the document because "I just thought this is gonna help the strike." He didn't know it was accusing someone of a felony. When Alie read him the perjury statement, Sutcliffe said, "I didn't know this was about some criminal claim against her. I had no idea."

Cortney Kerney — Sutcliffe's daughter and David Kerney's wife — signed to "appease her mother." She didn't read the document.

Person after person told the same story: they didn't write it, they didn't understand it, they thought it was a petition, and they had no idea it was accusing someone of a crime. These documents — sworn under perjury, delivered to the prosecutor's office, and intended to pressure law enforcement into charging an innocent person — were manufactured. The signers were not the authors. They were the evidence of how far this campaign was willing to go.

The third wave arrived on January 5, 2026 — more than a month after Alie had closed his investigation. Camille Lowman emailed the Chief of Police, OSPI, the Attorney General's office, the ESD 112 superintendent, and the Mayor of Vancouver with four new substantive declarations from Adam Aguilera (32 pages), Danny Stevenson (19 pages), Tim Siess (5 pages), and Katie Rich (5 pages), plus her own second declaration.

Unlike the form declarations, these were lengthy and detailed. But they shared a telling feature: extensive verbatim passages appeared across multiple documents. The same sections analyzing Dodge v. Evergreen School District, the same MRSC overtime analysis, the same editorial conclusions about Garrett Williams' billing — copied across Aguilera, Stevenson, and Siess. These were not independent testimonies. They were collaborative documents dressed as individual statements.

Lowman's accompanying email went further than anything before. She accused Williams of committing a crime against Det. Alie — providing false statements to a public servant — and suggested a different law enforcement agency should investigate because Alie was the victim. She had gone from concerned parent to accusing the district's lawyer of a crime against the detective who investigated her own complaint. The investigation was over. She was still escalating.

Twenty people signed declarations they didn't write, about facts they didn't know, under a perjury standard they didn't understand. Someone wrote those declarations. The signers were not that someone.

On December 2, 2025, Det. Jay Alie signed Supplement 5 and formally closed the investigation. His conclusion was unequivocal.

He found no basis for criminal charges against Jenae Gomes. The superintendent had authorized the contracts. The district confirmed the superintendent was authorized to do so. The school board had reviewed the issue and found no impropriety. The state auditor had reviewed the district's finances, including these contracts, and issued a clean report. Three other people had received identical contracts for the same work, and none of them were accused of anything.

Then Alie did something the complainants had not anticipated. He recommended the Clark County Prosecutor's Office review the complainants' conduct.

The offense designation in VPD's system was changed. Where once there had been a "General Information Report," there was now a formal case for Malicious Prosecution — Felony, under RCW 9.62.010.1. The suspects listed were not Jenae Gomes. They were Kendall Thiemann and Angie Bunda. Gomes was reclassified as the victim.

Camille Lowman's subsequent submissions — the Wave 3 declarations, the escalating emails to the Chief, the AG, and the Mayor — were each documented by Lt. Jeff Olson in Supplements 7, 8, and 9. Each supplement carried the same recommendation: "Refer to the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney's Office for review and charging determination."

There is a particular irony in how this story ends. For months, Thiemann, Bunda, and Lowman told anyone who would listen that Jenae Gomes was under criminal investigation. They posted it on social media. They emailed it to the school board. They told the newspapers. They pressured the prosecutor's office. They circulated declarations to make it look like a groundswell of public concern when it was, in the detective's assessment, a coordinated campaign.

They wanted a criminal investigation. They got one. It just wasn't the one they expected.

The three people who spent months accusing a public employee of a Class B felony are now themselves the subjects of a criminal referral for malicious prosecution — a Class C felony under Washington law. The police report they waved around as proof of a VPD investigation is now the evidence documenting their own conduct. The prosecutor's office they repeatedly contacted to demand charges is the same office now being asked to evaluate whether they should be charged.

Meanwhile, the attorney who helped architect the campaign — former prosecutor Alan Harvey, who knew exactly what a viable criminal case looks like and what this one was not — made contradictory statements to the detective, claimed ignorance of declarations that mirrored his own published words, and shifted between "friend" and "professional representative" depending on the audience. His conduct across this case raises questions that extend beyond this investigation and into the jurisdiction of the Washington State Bar Association.

The declaration signers — Potter, Cowell, the Kerneys, the Sutcliffes, and others — were used. They signed documents they didn't understand, accusing a person of crimes they knew nothing about, and submitted those documents under penalty of perjury to a prosecutor's office. They thought they were signing a petition. They were providing ammunition for a campaign designed to remove a negotiator from the table during a labor strike.

Every factual claim on this site is sourced directly from the Vancouver Police Department's completed investigation. The documents are available. The recordings exist. The contradictions are documented. The investigation is a matter of public record.

They called themselves advocates. The police report says different.