The insinuations The Signal made Sept. 27 and Oct. 10 relating to Jeff Stabile and his relationship with the Santa Clarita Veterans Services Collaborative are absurd. Anyone who knows, has worked with or volunteered with Jeff is aware he is kind, compassionate, humble, capable, selfless and of great integrity.
Self-proclaimed MAGA dentist Harleen Grewal was seeking to deflect from her video that went viral. In her video, she made her feelings about those who do not share her political views very clear. Her repulsive comments were shown repeatedly on local, state and national television as well as on all social media outlets. This resulted in thousands of viewers calling for her to surrender her dental license.
She sent a damning letter to The Signal filled with innuendos against Jeff. While fraudulent behavior and misspent funds were implied and Jeff’s name was the only one mentioned multiple times in Grewal’s letter to The Signal and in the two articles The Signal published, the irony is Jeff is guilty of no wrongdoing. I would like to set the story straight and counteract Grewal’s implications and The Signal’s innuendos.
It was stated as fact that donations were made from the collaborative to the NAACP and SCV PFLAG.
Jeff Stabile never donated to NAACP from a collaborative account. The money paid from the collaborative to the NAACP was a $75 vendor’s fee for hosting a collaborative resource table at a Juneteenth celebration in 2024. This was not a donation. I find it interesting that neither Grewal nor The Signal mentioned the vendor fees the collaborative paid to host resource tables at (other events). The NAACP is certainly not an organization aligned with Grewal’s political leanings. Could this be why she singled it out?
It was kind of Grewal and The Signal not only to mention that Jeff and I were the co-founders of PFLAG SCV in 1988, but The Signal gave an additional shoutout because the organization had honored us by creating a scholarship in our name.
There was a PFLAG donation of $300 made by collaborative founder Elliot Wolfe in 2019. Elliot was bankrolling the collaborative at that time and both he and his wife, Judy, had a familial interest in the organization. The donation was in the form of a personal check from Judy’s and Elliot’s checking account, a copy of which I have. The check was dated Feb. 16, 2019. Jeff had a heart attack on Feb. 14, 2019, and was in Kaiser Sunset awaiting open heart surgery. Elliot and Judy visited him and brought a get-well card with the check in it. Jeff was in the hospital for 17 days. How this personal check became comingled with collaborative funds is still a mystery but neither Jeff nor I had anything to do with it.
After Jeff had been volunteering for about six months, Wolfe, founder and president of the collaborative, was impressed by his quick grasp of the services being provided, his initiative in coming up with ideas for programs, and his calm manner and the respect he showed not only to vets and family members coming into the center, but also to volunteers. Elliot asked Jeff to represent his company, Pegasus 2 Consulting, as an independent contractor for the collaborative. In the contract Elliot proposed, he stipulated a list of paid responsibilities and non-paid expectations for Jeff to follow while managing the day-to-day machinations of the center and publicizing the collaborative throughout the community. The purpose of the latter was to establish partnerships with local businesses and nonprofits. The contract and stipend received full board approval and Jeff went far beyond expectations by volunteering many more than the 20 hours per week set in the contract.
As many businesses and nonprofits discovered after COVID, reopening their organizations was difficult and many were unable to do so. The collaborative board was determined that it remain open for veterans and family members who needed a friendly face, someone to empathize with, a safe place to share experiences, to receive guidance when trying to navigate the myriad of paperwork needed for benefits and other post-deployment needs, and more. Wolfe left before the pandemic. The board had gone through several iterations, and the new board recognized the importance of having an experienced, dedicated member of the organization to serve the veterans, recruit new volunteers, and keep the center, which has always been the heart of the collaborative, open five days a week. Because of his demonstrated dedication and capability, Jeff was asked once again to fill that role and he was approved by a unanimous vote of the board. Once again, he did not disappoint.
As math has never been an area of expertise for me and since I never had any reason or desire to be informed about financial statements or tax filings related to the collaborative, I cannot speak to many of the matters Grewal’s letter and the Signal articles address. What I do know, however, is that R.J. Kelly, a veteran, a local CPA, and a collaborative board member, was treasurer of the collaborative for a number of years, and acted as the collaborative’s CPA. He was tasked with filing taxes and the additional forms necessary for the organization to maintain its nonprofit status.
Grewal’s letter contends fiscal mismanagement — i.e., collaborative taxes not being filed on time or, in some years, not at all, and its nonprofit status being suspended. One would think that with Denise Lite and Jonathan Hatami, both lawyers and willing signatories of her letter to The Signal, by her side, Grewal would have done due diligence prior to making the not-so-veiled suggestions that Jeff Stabile was the culprit for what she terms as mismanagement and fraudulent behavior. The Signal’s interview of Kelly, who resigned from the board eight months ago, was not only published in The Signal’s Sept. 27 article but once again in the Oct. 11 issue. Kelly’s comments portrayed a dismal picture of the collaborative, claiming his reason for retiring was it was going in the wrong direction. Since he rarely appeared at the center and never volunteered for committees or outreach, his veracity and his given reason for resigning might be considered suspect. Perhaps Grewal should have dug a little deeper before implicating Jeff Stabile in this financial fiasco.
Lastly, I would like to dispel any speculation or misconceptions as to why Jeff Stabile was abrupt on the phone when The Signal reporter called for comments and why he resigned from the board. Neither stemmed from any wrongdoing on his part.
I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer July 24. We have been attending several medical appointments each week since then and, on the day The Signal reporter called Jeff, we’d just returned from a crucial test to determine the extent of spread and the possibility of a second cancer’s presence. He and I were exhausted and concerned about the result of the tests I had that afternoon. Jeff was in no frame of mind to respond to this reporter. After this incident and the publication of the article based upon Dr. Grewal’s attack which came out the next day, we realized that, given the magnitude of my cancer diagnosis, it would be in our best interest and in the best interest of the board for Jeff to resign. It was a sad day for us all as this is an organization he loves and to which he donated the past seven years of his life.
Dr. Harleen Grewal singled Jeff Stabile out numerous times in a letter to The Signal while claiming the collaborative’s financial mismanagement was “unsustainable, ethically questionable and dangerous.” This was unconscionable and hypocritical.
In a letter to the editor published in The Signal on Sept. 9, Grewal, portraying herself as an expert on cancel culture, asserted she had seen “firsthand how cancel culture works. When you stand up, speak out and make a difference, there are people who will try to tear you down. But here’s the truth: It only works if you let it.” She concludes with, “And I refuse to let it.”
I agree totally with Dr. Grewal’s definition of cancel culture. She knows how it works and demonstrated that beautifully in her attempt to destroy the reputation of one of our community’s most dedicated public servants for her own selfish reasons. Following her advice, Jeff and I refuse to let that happen to us.
Peggy Stabile
Valencia
