Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Cases Get Filled In

“I see it now, it becomes so clear:

Your insincerity ... and me all starry-eyed

You think that I would have known by now.”

-Asia

    In June, Sue Corrigan and had a telephone conversation.  She asked me, “You know, we are all intelligent people.  How could we have gotten taken in by Denise Hubbard?”  

    I told her it was because we wanted to — and that Denise was the only link to our children. Our conversation turned to goings-on at BBAS.  Sue asked me if we were going to the annual BBAS picnic, held in July.  

    I paused. “No. We never got an invitation.  They’re holding one this year?  Nobody told us about it.”

    She asked, “Oh, you didn’t get that email from Wendy?” 

    “No,” I said, shocked. “We haven’t gotten anything from BBAS in email since January.  We just assumed that they weren’t sending anything out publicly to their clients anymore.” 

     Sue seemed puzzled. 

    “Hmm.  We’re always getting all sorts of emails from them. We got one about waiting children and some other stuff.  Wendy sent the one about the picnic.  

    “I don’t think we’re going to go and we have made plans to take ourselves to a family get-together.  Supposedly Valeri is going to be there.”  

    Halogen light bulbs went off in my head.  Very, very bright halogen light bulbs. 

    She went on, “You haven’t received any of this stuff? About the picnic, the updates, Denise’s gallbladder surgery?” 

    “No,” I said. “We haven’t received anything at all. Especially not about Denise’s gallbladder surgery, and especially not about the picnic. What other stuff have you received?” 

    “Oh, really useless things — updates about the office hours, pictures of kids to adopt and other useless information nobody will ever use if they had to.”

    I can’t recall if I asked Sue to forward the emails to us, or if she offered, but she said “As soon as I get off the phone, I’ll forward these things on to you.  

    “Some of them are pretty strange. You really wonder if they know what they’re doing.  Most of what they do is so useless anyway.” 

    I thanked her.  True to her word, she forwarded much of BBAS electronic correspondence we had not been receiving for the past two months.

    If the word “plonk” means anything to you, you will know how we felt as Daniel and I opened up the forwarded BBAS emails that we had not been receiving.

    Emails sent to almost every other client, proving Denise had deliberately to shut us out on every level.

    She nearly succeeded. Her gravest fear of her clients hooking up was prophetic. 

    What was in those electronic communications that so fired us up?  Oh, lots of neat things which we collected and organized for our own purposes.   

    There was a forward dated May 12 from Wendy Stamper informing clients about an “emergency gallbladder surgery” Denise had undergone.  News to us.

    There was one interesting thing about this email, and a major breach of protocol on Wendy’s part: in the “To” section of this email, was a whole list of addresses of what we presumed to be all BBAS clients, past and present.

    I wrote them all down.  I noticed who was not included in Wendy’s mass email: Daniel and Elizabeth Case, Matt and Mary Hutchison and Allan and Charlene Whitwell.

 ... all defiantly sitting in Denise Hubbard’s doghouse.  Many of those emails and the clients whose name was attached I recognized.

    The second was photos of children “available for adoption.” It felt more like “children immediately available for purchase.”

    Third was a “Building Blocks Adoption Services Electronic Newsletter” dated May 17, 2000. Paydirt.

   You can read it here. We will be referring back to this, but here are some salient points in this Electronic Newsletter: 

       1. Directing clients to shop around Rainbow Kids photo listing for “waiting children” – in direct contradiction of what was on BBAS website at that time under “Waiting Children.”  

       2.  Information about Russian adoptions and the process.  

       3.  The situation in Bulgaria about “filing a complaint with the MOH for taking so long on clients cases.” 

       4.  MENTIONING THE TRIP TO BULGARIA PUBLICLY from May 20-28^th  and,

       5.  Slamming one client in particular (More here).

     That fourth point was the a heinous, scathing LIE Denise Hubbard had told us.  This woman had had the audacity to lie to us in her May 29 email.

    This email, sent to every other Bulgarian BBAS client save Daniel and Elizabeth Case, proved it. We reproduce it in its entirety.

            From:  “bbadoption”bbadoption@msn.com

            To:        Denise L. Hubbard denise@bbas.org

            Sent:      Thursday, May 11, 2000 1:25 PM

            Subject   Trip Next Week   

            Hello to All!

Just a note to let everyone know – I will be in Bulgaria May 20-28^th.  This is very exciting news for BBAS because I am traveling to 10 cities and 10 orphanages.  Some of these orphanages are new to BBAS.  I will be taking donations for the orphanages.  Monetary donations are needed to purchase formula, baby food, vitamins and medications.  I would also like to have monetary donations to help pay for surgeries that need to be completed on children that are special needs.  If you or anyone you know is interested in sending in a donation please sent to BBAS, Inc. P.O. Box 1028, Medina, OH  44258.

We appreciate anything we can get to help these kids.

In my absence, Wendy, Sandi and our staff will be available for any assistance you may need.  Have a great spring!!! 

Denise

    The fifth was Wendy’s thank-you to all who sent get well wishes for Denise’s rapid recovery. Shouldn’t the surgery have been to establish a conscience and a heart?

    Sixth and last was the invitation to the BBAS annual picnic to be held at Geauga Lake amusement park near Cleveland in July. Speaking and taking questions from the audience were to be Valeri Kamenov and his son Vladimir. That would have been nice to know about and attend.

    The last was interesting — a note about Lori Homeyer coming on board and the new charity that Denise and Rick Marco were setting up for the orphans of the world called “International Concerns for Children Fund.”     

    Lori Homeyer was “on board” BBAS for at least a month that summer.  I found two posts that she had made to a Yahoo! International Adoption list in July.  However, by the time we were to pick Anguel up, Lori had disappeared.

    We heard from her in November 2004 when she happened across this site while doing updates to one of her own. She is doing quite well and has had nothing to do with BBAS for years.

    Lori shared with us that Denise had asked her to work for BBAS after M was home.  Lori thought it would be a good opportunity to help other families out. M's adoption had been a success and she felt her knowledge of Bulgarian adoption was useful.  However, Lori found working with Denise onerous; Lori, however, was a very busy woman with alot on her plate: running her own business, establishing a new, raising her three biological children, and most importantly, blending M into the family structure.  There was only so much time in the day.

    For the month Lori was associated with Denise, she was gaven clients whose timelines were going to be longer than they had been promised. Denise tied Lori's hands.  Lori was not able to communicate directly with Valeri Kamenov, who had really liked her. She had hoped she would be dealing with him and not Denise.  Unfortunately, Denise told Lori that she could only communicate with herself or Wendy Stamper, which severely restricted communications with clients.

    After a month of it, Lori, overwhelmed with her real job, her children and her life, broke off her "employment" with BBAS.  She was relieved to be done with it and moved on.

    We needn’t say how angry we were that Denise had so flagrantly LIED to us about making a “special trip” to Bulgaria to “take care” of the “problem” we had caused with Dr. Sabrutova and Anguel’s adoption. Did she think we were that stupid or that she had done that good of a job isolating us?  

    She must have, but thanks to Sue Corrigan, we became informed and Denise and Richard J. Marco Jr. were none the wiser.  

    This is what happens when you attempt to estrange paying clients from one another.  They find each other on the Internet and unite.

    Throughout the summer and fall, Sue continued to forward on other useless BBAS correspondence deliberately being withheld from us. 

    We are grateful to the Corrigans for sending us this information.  We owe them for that because without it, Denise very well may have succeeded in causing us to forgo Anguel’s adoption entirely and in the process, cost us our marriage.