The Brief

An Orange County supervisor’s daughter at the center of a controversy over what happened to millions of taxpayer dollars told LAist she had a limited role in the nonprofit that handled the money, despite records stating otherwise.

Rhiannon Do, in her first public statements since LAist started reporting on questions about the spending in November, also said she no longer works for the organization, Viet America Society (VAS).

Do previously did not respond to LAist, but answered some questions by email early this month. She told LAist: “It has been amply shown that I was never an officer or director for VAS.”

She did not provide information showing that was the case.

Public records obtained by LAist show Do signed as Viet America Society’s president on two mental health services subcontracts funded by the county. Records provided by the nonprofit to the county also list her as one of its three directors and officers this past October, and state that she was appointed to another year as an officer. And she was reported as the group’s only director and officer on the original version of its public tax filing for 2022.

Do did not answer follow-up questions asking how she explains those records.

Do is a second year law student at UC Irvine, and the daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do and Cheri Pham, the assistant presiding judge of O.C. Superior Court.

The responses to LAist — signed “Rhiannon Do” — were from an email address that, according to records LAist obtained from the county, Rhiannon Do used to communicate with county staff. In one of those emails, from February 2022, Rhiannon Do represented herself as Viet America Society’s executive director.

The funding being questioned by county staff was tied to COVID-relief funded meals earmarked for residents in need during the pandemic.

Rhiannon Do says her role was limited

Rhiannon Do said that at Viet America Society she worked on mental health services — and was not connected to millions in coronavirus relief dollars that her father directed to the group.

“I have worked for the past 3 years to help them stand up a mental health clinic, which was the first of its kind for the Vietnamese American community in Orange County,” she wrote.

The clinic — Warner Wellness Center — received authorizations for up to $3.1 million in county-funded subcontracts, which her father voted to fund without publicly disclosing his close family connection.

County records show Rhiannon Do signed $375,000 of those subcontracts as president of Viet America Society, which does business under the Warner Wellness name. Amid questions about her qualifications to lead a mental health clinic, Rhiannon Do’s father has pointed to her undergraduate internship working on mental health legislation at the Steinberg Institute as her experience.

As for her role at Viet America Society, Rhiannon Do wrote to LAist that she “was later hired to work on a proposal for the Elderly Nutrition Program, a food service program for seniors, which was completely unrelated to Covid and any Covid funding.”

“I was never involved in any of the Covid meal gap programs or have ever played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS,” she added.

Millions have gone unaccounted for

At Supervisor Do’s direction, Viet America Society has received more than $9 million from the county to feed needy residents, plus $1 million to build a Vietnam War memorial. He also joined votes to fund up to $3.1 million in mental health subcontracts for the group, all without disclosing his close family connection.

Supervisor Do has not responded to multiple interview requests from LAist over the past six months. In a November interview with another news outlet, he defended his decisions to award money to his daughter’s group without public disclosure, saying he wasn’t required to disclose his family connection.

At issue, as county officials warned in a series of letters in February: the group has failed to document what happened with the first year-and-a-half of meal funding it directly received from the county, totaling $2.7 million in 2021 and the first half of 2022.

County officials set mid-March deadlines for Viet America Society to provide long overdue proof of how that money was used. The nonprofit missed the first deadline, which covered funding for the first half of 2021.

Then, the day after the March 14 deadline, a lawyer for the group said it was working to provide the county what it’s looking for.

Nearly a month later, the group has not yet provided any more documents, according to county spokesperson Jennifer Ayari. She responded via email late last week to questions from LAist.

The county’s extended deadline for Viet America Society to submit overdue documents is now April 24 at 5 p.m., Ayari wrote.

Those documents include accounting records, a list of who received meals, the dates meals were delivered, delivery addresses and contact info for the people who received meals.

Bridgecreek Plaza strip mall, which has offices for Viet America Society and Warner Wellness in Huntington Beach.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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The timeframe for the meals funding that’s under scrutiny overlaps with Rhiannon Do representing herself as the nonprofit’s executive director, in the February 2022 email to a county executive.

What records show about Rhiannon Do's role

LAist has obtained nine different public records listing Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s top leaders, including instances of her signatures as VAS’s president on county-funded subcontracts. Among the records:

• The nonprofit’s original public tax filing for 2022, which marked Rhiannon Do as the only officer and only director during calendar year 2022. It states it was signed under penalty of perjury in October 2023 by Peter Pham, the group’s founder.
• October 2023 board meeting minutes for Viet America Society, which showed Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s three directors and officers, and participating in decisions at the meeting. They show her joining a vote with the two other directors — Peter Pham and Dinh Mai – in authorizing Pham and Mai to sign checks from the nonprofit’s bank account.
• Rhiannon Do signed as Viet America Society’s president on two county-funded subcontracts for mental health outreach services, totaling $375,000.
• Rhiannon introduced herself to a county official in a February 2022 email as “the Executive Director for VAS (Viet America Society).”

Do says she’s no longer working at the group

In her recent email exchange with LAist, Rhiannon Do said she’s parted ways with Viet America Society.

“I am also no longer with VAS or the Warner Wellness Center,” she said, referring to the name the nonprofit has used for its mental health work.

She didn’t respond to a follow-up email asking why she left.

In February, Viet America Society was informed it would no longer be allowed to perform its county-funded mental health work. That work was funded through subcontracts with the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community (OCAPICA) and the OC chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI OC).

NAMI suspended the group from its work effective immediately on March 5, while OCAPICA notified Viet America Society that it was terminating its work with the group by the end of June, and not renewing it for the following fiscal year.

Nonprofit attorney: ‘A lot of things that were screwed up’

In a phone interview with LAist this week, Sterling Scott Winchell, Viet America Society’s lawyer, told LAist that Rhiannon Do “was basically just a caseworker.” He attributed the paper trail showing otherwise to “sloppiness” and negligence.

“Contracts were written with the wrong name on them. She never held that title. Things happen,” Winchell said last week in his first interview with LAist.

“I can speculate for you,” he added. “There was a previous entity, and she may have been an officer in that before the funding started. But I don’t know why the contracts and so forth were drafted that way. I think it was just sloppiness."

He didn’t specify what that entity was. But Rhiannon Do and two other VAS leaders were listed as officers starting in mid 2021 for a private company — Behavioral Health Solutions — that operated under the Warner Wellness name before Viet America Society took on the name in late 2022, according to state and county registration records.

Many of the records showing Rhiannon Do in leadership at Viet America Society — including the subcontracts and directors meeting minutes — are dated many months after Behavioral Health Solutions informed the state in early January 2023 that it had shut down.

LAist asked Winchell about the paper trail showing Rhiannon Do in top leadership positions at the group, including president, vice president, director and officer.

“Yeah, I would agree with you. There [were] a lot of things that were screwed up. It doesn’t make them true, it just makes them negligent,” Winchell said.

Winchell was Supervisor Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023. He told the county he was hired in late February to represent the nonprofit.

Winchell recently told the OC Register that the nonprofit has refiled its 2022 tax filing without Rhiannon Do’s name as an officer. An amended version of the filing, marked as received by the state Attorney General’s charity registry on March 25, no longer lists her as an officer. It has a note at the end stating it was amended to “Remove Rhiannon Do out” and that “She is not an officer of Viet America Society.”

Attorney also says answers will come in audit

Winchell said the county’s questions would be straightened out in an upcoming audit commissioned by the nonprofit. That audit was required under its county contract, and is nearly two years overdue.

As of last month, Viet America Society was trying to find an accountant to conduct the audit, according to a letter Winchell wrote to the county.

In its demand letters in February, the county warned that it could make the nonprofit repay the money if it doesn’t prove what happened with it.

Winchell said the nonprofit and the county are working closely.

“We’re working together toward a common goal. Our success is their success. It’s not adversarial,” he said. “I understand that controversy gets clicks. But there’s no adversarial relationship between these parties. We’re working together."

“They fell behind on some administrative issues, so they hired me,” he added of the nonprofit.

Winchell said the audit will provide answers about how the money was spent.

Asked if all of the dollars provided to the group for meals went to providing meals, Winchell said: “That’s my understanding.”

“If it’s not the case, the audit will reveal that,” he continued. “My understanding is that all the money — whatever money’s been used, has gone to where it should go.”

Winchell said he thinks the audit will be completed by the end of June.

A county spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the county is currently working with Viet America Society on compliance requirements.

In her emailed responses to LAist, Rhiannon Do said there was nothing improper about how Viet America Society’s funding was used.

The “insinuation that there was something untoward with the use of VAS funds is fabricated” and a “false narrative,” wrote Do.

In a follow-up email, she said she never “played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS.”

How to watchdog local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention.

Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The next scheduled board meeting is April 23. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Thursday that he will run for Senate Majority Leader in the next Congress, setting up a challenge to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer after the party swept to power in the midterm elections.

Van Hollen said in a statement that “the American people called for change” and that is why he is running.

“It’s now on us to meet this moment, and to do that we need new leadership,” Van Hollen said. “This is not about any one person — it’s about answering the call of the American people. That is why I’m running for Senate Majority Leader.”

Van Hollen’s challenge comes after he said he was considering a bid and after Schumer has said he has the necessary support to win. The closed-door, secret-ballot election will be held in early December.

The race will be the first contested election for Democratic leader in decades. The question of whether to reelect Schumer has already divided the caucus and many senators will not say publicly how they will vote. They have privately deliberated about what message to take from the election, and Schumer recruited many of the party’s winning candidates and raised money for them.

Schumer has been talking to Democratic senators since the election about forming an agenda for 2027.

“I’m going to win it,” Schumer told The Associated Press in an interview last week.

The Los Angeles Unified School District may lease spaces in its elementary, middle and high schools to use as childcare spaces for babies. 

The district is putting together a list of qualified providers and looking to identify spaces it could lease.

Ranae Amezquita, executive director of the district’s early childhood education division, said once the district has a list of spaces, it will start a request for proposal process that childcare providers can apply to during the 2027-2028 school year.

Why is LAUSD looking to expand childcare options now?

In April, LAUSD board members passed a resolution in an aim to expand childcare and early education slots in the district.

The district currently runs about 90 preschools, called early education centers, for children 2 to 4 years old, but it has only four centers that serve children under 2. “The problem with infant care — the reason we can't open them ourself at this time, is because of the cost,” said Amezquita at a board meeting Thursday.

The need for local infant and toddler childcare is high. In 2022, L.A. County assessed that the county only had enough licensed spaces to care for 4% of kids under 2. At the same time, the district has been facing declining enrollment amid lower birth rates. The resolution to expand early childhood care aims to, in part, strengthen the enrollment pipeline into the district.

Learn more about affordable childcare in LA

• For many California parents, paying for childcare means racking up credit card debt
• Why childcare in California may get harder to find

In an extraordinary turn of events, the state’s judicial watchdog has removed Judge Robert Draper, 84, from the Los Angeles County Superior Court after 14 years of service. He faced several counts of misconduct prior to losing reelection earlier this year.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance concluded Tuesday in an 87-page decision that Draper engaged in 17 instances of behavior that made him no longer fit for office. He hasn’t heard a case since 2023 because of the issues.

“Judge Draper persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct,” the commission said in a statement, adding that it was “aggravated by his refusal to accept responsibility for his misconduct, and his lack of insight or remorse for his misconduct and its effect on others.”

Draper previously admitted to some of the claims and denied others in interviews with LAist earlier this year. In a statement this week, he called the decision “deeply disappointing.”

“Any individual put under such intense and meticulous scrutiny likely would find themselves in a similar situation, albeit with slightly different facts,” he said.

Draper said the investigation came at a time when he raised concerns within the judiciary, and that it was used “presumably for purposes of dismissing his dissent by discrediting him.”

He plans to pursue “other avenues” to change the system, according to the statement. Draper's attorney declined to share what those would be.

 “It’s very rare for a judge to be removed from the bench,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “It’s the ultimate sanction against a judge.”

The commission has only removed 15 judges since it gained the authority to do so in 1995, according to its records, with the last for an L.A. County Superior Court judge happening in 2006.

The misconduct

The decision comes after a yearslong investigation and legal proceedings with independent evaluators. Prior to that, Draper had never been disciplined. According to the commission, his long list of misconduct includes:

• Making “offensive” and “insensitive” comments in court about race and gender.
• Sending “abusive” emails and unnecessary graphic pictures of his naked backside to colleagues.
• Acting with “deliberate defiance of his presiding judge’s orders” by continuing to access court systems and work on cases while on involuntary leave.

Some allegations the commission reviewed were dismissed for lack of evidence, including one that he inappropriately touched an attorney’s hair.

What happens next

While Draper lost reelection, his seat is now empty sooner than usual. Judge-elect Tal Khan Valbuena is on deck to replace him in January.

It’s possible Gov. Gavin Newsom may decide to appoint Khan Valbuena sooner. The court could also move another judge into his department.