“You take it from the kids” : Brooks kids most harmed by chicken wing theft, parents say

This report was made possible by the National Association of Black Journalists and Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Black Press Grant program.

Keisha Evans relied upon school lunches for her daughter during remote learning. The laughter and jubilee of Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School were no more as coronavirus shuttered classrooms to contain spread. But Harvey Schools District 152 still provided free lunches for families in need, available to pick up at school.

But Brooks parents weren’t the only ones taking food from the school. Between July 2020 and February 2022, former food services consultant Vera Lidell allegedly stole over $1.5 million of taxpayers' money through unauthorized orders of chicken wings, county prosecutors allege.

“It's just a sad situation, but I hope she learn her lesson,” Evans said. “You don't do that, that was just real wrong.”

Evans, and other parents, are outraged after the 66-year-old woman, hired by the district in 2014 as director of food services, stole over 11,000 cases of chicken wings that were never provided to students.

The theft follows a larger pattern of financial mismanagement and opaque dealings within Harvey School District 152. Parents have offered varying accounts of how they learned of the incident. In a community where 20,000 people live without a full-scale brick-and-mortar grocery store, the poultry snatch is an insult to injury as Harvey families struggle with food apartheid.

According to court documents, the district business manager discovered the problem in January 2022 during a mid-year routine audit.

Only halfway through the school year, the food services program was $300,000 over budget, they noticed. The business manager alerted the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, which soon launched an investigation.

The city’s social media sphere was in uproar after news broke of Lidell’s arrest in January. The debacle even made national headlines, even mocked on Saturday Night Live’s “The Weekend Update.”

Evans said she learned from the news. John Thomas has lived in Harvey for over eight years. He told the HWH he never received a communication from the district or school.

“How can someone even have a fraud that much in chicken wings? That's the question. It saddens me because that's money taken away from the school system to beautify the school or even give the kids better books, and keep clean around the area,” Thomas said.

“Those are salaries that has been affected because of whatever kind of scam this was. This is terrible.”

Angel Buckley agreed. “I was upset because you take it from the kids. You know some kids out here that don't even get a chance to have food and you're just gonna take it from them,” Buckley said.

A pattern of inventory mismanagement

The United States Department of Education previously conducted a series of audits into District 152, specifically investigating how it spent Title I funding. That’s reserved for low-income communities, with allocation calculated based on census tract estimates. Eligible expenses include school psychologists, computers, and emergency medical supplies.

There they were: deep fissures in the district’s inventory management processes. Inventory sheets used to track spending, namely of notebook and desktop computers, were missing, according to federal officials. And the district underreported an estimated $110,000 in expenses as compared to the accounting records with the Illinois State Board of Education.

Lab assistant turnover, coupled with an absence of staff who could review the sheets other than the assistant who prepared them, made “Title I assets more susceptible to loss or misuse,”a federal 2017 audit reads.

Federal officials recommended the District take several corrective measures, including sending periodic expenditure reports to the Illinois State Board of Education.

The district was advised to overhaul its inventory methods. But according to the final report, it never did. The ISBE agreed with the district’s findings and recommendations and pledged to require compliance from the district by the end of the 2017 academic year.

Harvey School District 152 declined an interview request with the HWH citing an ongoing investigation but indicated they were cooperating.

It’s unclear what Lidell did with the chicken wings. Children aren’t even permitted to eat chicken wings within the district because they have bones, according to court documents.

Gordon Food Service, the food purveyor, always knew when she placed an order, because of how large they were. Liddell placed orders separate from the schools’ regular requests. According to court documents, all orders were retrieved using a district cargo van. And invoices were paid by the Ddistrict. Surveillance camera footage from the interior and exterior shows Lidell picking up the items.

School board candidate Sadiya Vohra is a paraprofessional who’s never held public office before. Her campaign is focused on “fostering trust between students, parents, and teachers,” she wrote in an email to the HWH.“Families within the community have expressed their concern about how $1.5 million dollars of fraud was able to perpetrate for so long,” Vohra added.

Liddell made $52,508 a year as food services director, according to district contracts, obtained by the HWH via public records request. In 2021, in the midst of the alleged theft, Lidell was promoted to a $225 a day salary consultant gig for food services, according to her contract. Lidell, who has no documented criminal history, was arrested in January and pleaded not guilty at a March court hearing.

The food access conundrum

Tad Kuriapa is a co-owner of Alex’s Butcher Shop, a meat market that opened last year. Kuriapa said that his store is also already experiencing financial hardships.

“We struggling every single day for a few reasons,” Kuriapa said. “Ninety percent of our business [is]based on the link cards. We basically depending that people will spend their money after the day they receive their LINK cards,” he said.

“It's a struggle every single day. It's not about the competition—it's about people,” Kuriapa added. “Our product is fresh every single day, and at the same time we have a short period of time to sell it.”

Harvey is a food apartheid community desert that has not been able to keep a supermarket. Before Alex’s, that same facility on 159th Street and Wood hosted Aldi’s. It closed in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic cracked open concerns over securing basic needs like groceries. “It was a lot of help,” Evans said about food pickup at Brooks.

According to data from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, 11 percent of white families across the Chicago-area experienced food insecurity in early 2022. That figure jumped to 24 percent for Latino households, and 29 percent for Black households.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, Thornton’s urban farm and faith-based organizations saw upticks in Harvey families seeking food for families —many new faces— they told the HWH. Corner stores, church food pantries, and carnicerias fill Harvey’s grocery store void. But that confluence of junk food, boxed surprises, and meat and vegetable options fall short of the quality one would find at a grocery store.

Then there's the big tease: JET Foods. “Coming soon” signs dot a vacant storefront on 147th Street and Dixie Highway. It’s a controversial grocery store chain started by former FBI informant John Everett Thomas. He was convicted of swindling nearby Riverdale out of nearly $400,000, promising a marina development he never built.

City officials have gone dark about the Harvey property, offering little to no details about the matter when residents ask about it.

In 2021, JET Foods opened up shop in Carol Stream. Expansion plans included communities of color like Rockford, Park Forest, and Harvey. The Carol Stream location closed six months later.

An Iowa-based auctioneer company announced the furnishings at the Harvey facility, along with another unopened in Park Forest, would be on the auction block, the Daily Southtown reported last March.

Alex’s is struggling to retain workers because of cold working conditions, according to Kuriapa. He lamented that upon opening, they had 72 employees. As of January this year, only 28 of them stayed.

Despite the struggles, Kuriapa said they are hoping to expand this year by opening a grocery store.