Children’s Hospital of Illinois Foundation, 2003--December 2019

 

Malnutrition Clinic, Cite Soleil–2016 (Photo by John Carroll)

In 2002, Haitian Hearts raised and donated 445,000 dollars to Children’s Hospital of Illinois (CHOI). However, during 2003, Haitian Hearts received no donor list from CHOI and OSF sent us no notices on money that was sent to Haitian Hearts to an OSF address. Haitian Hearts had become a not-for-profit 501.c.3 organization in October of 2002 because we could not trust OSF any longer.)

During the fall of 2003, Anne Wagenbach, Haitian Hearts Coordinator, went to OSF Foundation and spoke to a secretary who stated to Anne that she would send the Haitian Hearts donor list. In other words, everyone that had donated to Haitian Hearts or CHOI/Haitian Hearts during 2003 would be sent to Anne so we could see who to thank and also determine what OSF owed Haitian Hearts. The kids in Haiti were and are very dependent on these funds to help obtain their passports and visas, medication, American Airlines flights to the United States, medication, and surgery.

Weeks went by, and Anne did not receive the donor list from OSF Foundation. This seemed highly immoral for a 1.6 billion dollar industry to withhold our own donor list. In the meantime, OSF-CHOI sent literature to people seeking funds for CHOI using our donor lists.

One afternoon, I drove to the OSF-Foundation office. The secretary that Anne had spoken with invited me to her office to print out our Haitian Hearts donor list for me. She also told me that she had placed the donor list in the outgoing mail in the Foundation office. While she was finding the Haitian Hearts donor list, Linda Arnold walked into her office.

Linda was director of the Foundation office. Several years before, just after Linda arrived in Peoria, she constructed a letter for me to sign that said that Haitian Hearts had donated 300,000 dollars to CHOI. I told her we had raised much more than that. So she had her secretary change the figure to 400,000 dollars. I refused to sign this also. At that point, I told Linda that we had raised at least 600,000 dollars for CHOI, so she revised the letter once again with this figure, and I signed it. Either OSF’s record-keeping was very sloppy or it was a trick. (I knew OSF had no idea what they were talking about in January 2003 while I was picketing the medical center, when they told the press that we owed them money secondary, to my experiences with Linda Arnold.)

In the Foundation office that day, in the fall of 2003, Linda told me that I could leave and that they would mail me the donor list for 2003. I told her that it would be no problem for me to stay since it was being brought up on the computer right then. Just when the secretary was to print the donor list out, the printer wouldn’t work for some reason. Linda told me that I should leave or she would call hospital security. I told her to go ahead and call security. I wasn’t doing anything wrong and had been invited up by the secretary.

Also, Linda knew that the Rotary Club North official had called me and let me know that Linda had “adamantly requested” that he send monies that was dedicated to Haitian Hearts to her instead. He refused to do so and told me, “John, if I would have done this, you would have never seen this money.”

So when I told Linda to go ahead a call OSF Security, her eyes glazed over and she froze. She didn’t call Security but she did tell her secretary to go home and “take care of your babies”. (I knew the secretary had no babies at home.) However, her secretary was afraid of Linda and told me she was leaving. So I left too.

Haitian Hearts never did get a donor list that year from the general public and we have received none since. However, at the end of 2003, OSF Foundation turned over a check from OSF, signed by Keith Steffen, to Haitian Hearts for $8,343.80. Where did this money come from and why did OSF cash the checks that came to Haitian Hearts?

In 2003  I believe that we would never have seen this money if we had not gone to Foundation in the fall of 2003 and confronted Linda Arnold. We never knew who to thank for these donations because OSF would not release the donor lists to us. And we have no idea if OSF returned to us what they should have. (It seems odd that Haitian Hearts contributions to CHOI/Haitian Hearts would fall from almost one-half million dollars in 2002, to $8,343.80 in 2003.) The ultimate people that suffer here are the Haitian children that need the funds for surgery in the United States.

At the end of the day, I often wondered how much money that had been sent for Haitian Hearts was redirected to other areas? And when the rubber met the road, I realized that civic-minded organizations composed of well-meaning business people would side with the second largest employer in Peoria (OSF) and not with sick Haitian kids. Witnessing this along with observing religious leaders cave in to the power and the money, was very distressing.

On January 15, 2004 Haitian Hearts met with a representative of the Charitable Trust Division of the Attorney General’s Office in Springfield to discuss OSF and their financial practices.

 

John A. Carroll, MD

www.haitianhearts.org