Sometimes random links from family can turn up interesting stories. This article, Google cached from the Boulder Daily Camera, was originally a missive from a cousin along the lines of "18 year old burned his car at 4:20, lol wrong bong dude." What caught my eye was the following:
Kyndra Lyn Gardner, 31, of Broomfield, pleaded guilty to felony theft and was sentenced Friday to 10 years of probation in addition to her jail time.
The name dinged in my memory, mostly from the odd spelling. Isn't that Takara's name?
Turns out it's a whole lot crazier than that paragraph even gets.
I traced things back from what I know. Takara used to frequent an old message board I did. We all knew each other by name, and I knew that her first name was Kyndra. I wanted to be sure, so I did some more Googling. Her 1UP profile left me with not just her name but her picture. It's definitely Takara. It also supplies that she's currently in the Boulder area, and that she's 31.
Combine that with her public profile on the GU forums and her date of birth comes up too. Kyndra "Takara" Gardner, March 22, 1976, she's up Boulder way, and she works the books.
Throwing Kyndra Lyn Gardner into Google got me this as the second hit: her booking sheet with a date of birth. It matches. Well, hell. Then I start following threads.
According to this Daily Camera article, the whole business started when Takara was arrested on Friday, April 6th and accused of 2 charges of felony theft in the range of $60,000. According to the charges, she used a small business' credit cards for 16 months from 2004 to 2006, racking up first class flights to Vegas and Atlanta, shoes and spa treatments. The second charge was that she stole money from the same people to pay off her own credit cards. She claims she was asked to spend the money:
"All I can really say is I was just doing my job," Gardner said Tuesday. "I was asked to use the credit cards in the way that I used them."
That's a whole lot of hot stone massages, there. And shoes? Look out Imelda Marcos...A CHALLENGER APPROACHES!!!
She eventually pleaded guilty. Along with the guilty plea she had the second charge dropped, leaving her with a single Class 3 Felony charge of theft, specifically (according to the booking sheet) 18-4-401(4), which means that it was an aggregate value of her theft and not a single incident. Apparently she's now in jail, and will be until she and Woody's child is born, at which point she gets house arrest and 10 years' probation afterwards. I'd consider that way lucky, considering it's usually 4-to-12 years with 5 years on parole. Oh, and she's gotta pay $81,000 restitution.
She hasn't posted in at least two weeks, which would be consistent with the booking information. 9:30 AM on October 8th would be coming on almost 3 weeks.
I really can't imagine what it'd be like to have to have a baby in prison. I'm sure it'd be hard to deal with being handcuffed to a hospital bed. There has to be a line of responsibility drawn somewhere, though. And it certainly leads to other questions, after all. They've had a community supporting them for a long, long time. They even had registries filled for them. We've been over it time and time again, you don't know where your donation money's going.
We gave Woody an opportunity to respond, but he hasn't as of this point.
Here's to a healthy, safe baby.
UPDATE: Woody and Takara both emailed me after the article went up. Woody's initial response was that it was "in no way related to [him], GU Comics or the game industry." In addition, "And where I do not see relevance to the MMO community at large, since it is not a gaming matter. I understand your curiosity."
Takara's email response was to accuse me of impropriety in how I obtained the information I related in the article and that I should be careful not to incredibly frustrate them both by drawing clear conclusions, rooted in fact and backed up by proof from the county of Boulder and her own past public dealings.
I responded to both of them replying that all of the information was public, and obtained through Google.
Tak replies that she's not giving birth in the jail, nor will she be handcuffed to the bed during delivery. Hyperbole aside, the next thing I knew, Woody wrote the following on his forum:
For the last year and a half Takara (Kyndra) has been fighting a legal battle with an ex-employer. She was accused of taking money. A lot of money. The matter moved from a civil case to a criminal case. And having no money to hire a lawyer she had to rely on a public defender to make her case. With no ability to prove she did not do it, and the District Attorney refusing to accept a plea of "no contest" Takara had to plea guilty to avoid the possibility of our son being without a mother for the next 4-12 years. During sentencing, the judge decided that Taks wasn't repentant enough and sentenced her to spend the last six weeks of her pregnancy in jail. She went in the day after the baby shower.
Technically she will be released the moment she goes into labor. But we are currently working with the Public Defender to ask the judge to reconsider. When she is released she will spend the next year (from october 8th) on electric home monitoring. And will, over the next 10 years, have to pay $81,000 in restitution (the money she was accused of taking, back taxes they accused her of not filing, legal fees, etc). The probation also stipulates that she can not have a job where she handles money, that she can not, without permission, conduct any financial transactions over $200, and 200 hours of community service.
It should be noted that no money that has come into GU either by advertising, commission, or donation has gone to pay any legal fees, etc. And the donations that have come in via the baby shower that have not been used specifically to buy baby stuff has been used to pay bills for the house which leads us to a discussion of GU finances.
Last year, GU had a large advertiser that, unfortunately did not sign on for another year. This year has been spent living from paycheck to late paycheck, fighting for every advertiser we could get. It's not gone well. And with Kyndra not being able to work these last few months what little savings I had have now disappeared while I payesd bills. For the last month the only thing that has kept me personally afloat has been the overdraft protection on my bank account. Every day I run to the mail box hoping one of our advertisers has payed for the services we rendered. This is the only reason I reluctantly agreed to ask GU fans to help me with baby gifts. You guys shouldn't have to worry about the money I make, so I don't like relying on you in that way, asking for your financial help. I had to do it in 2004 and I still don't feel good about that.
This whole matter was supposed to be private as it did not involve GU in any way. But certain acts on the part of other members of the gaming community have worked to bring the issue to light regardless of it not being a gaming community matter. So I felt it best that you readers hear the story from me directly. You can make whatever decisions you like about the validity of the information. Where I can not comment on the legal end of this ordeal. I can say that if there was any legal misconduct I was not aware of it and did not benefit from it. But as far as I know there was no wrong doing.
Even though this is a private matter between Kyndra and her ex-employer, it's very possible that the actions of said gaming community member could have reprocussions for GU. Any ties I have to the gaming companies may be severed. The few advertisers we do have may dry up. And contracts we have in place for coming months may be voided.
I do not know what all of this means for GU's future. I don't know what it means for my future. But, I hope you understand now why I have been so exhausted and distant lately.
The one shining spot in this whole mess has been the support that GU readership has continued to show me, Kyndra and our soon to be born son. But, I understand if there are those of you that feel you need to withdraw that support for me and the comic because of a perceived association to this matter.
Thank you for reading and understanding. I will do my best to answer any and all of your questions. But please keep in mind that it was very difficult for me to write this post and submit it for public consumption.
It was originally posted here, but it may be likely that you can't read it anymore. He's closed the specific thread to non-registered viewing. It was public for a while, then all of a sudden...poof.
Clearly, an overreaction like this means that nothing is wrong and all should stay the course.
For someone who was undecided at 6:00PM they've sure swung me to one side of the fence pretty quickly.
