ORINDA — Sitting on her pink bedding, Vivian shows off her favorite toys: Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez dolls, a Bieber Santa hat, an American Girl doll and an assortment of large and small pink stuffed animals.

In many ways she’s the typical second-grader you’d find in this affluent community, but then again she’s not. Vivian is Latina, her mother is hired help, and they don’t own a house. Her single mother, Maria, works as a live-in nanny in the 4,000-square-foot home, and the comfortable life she has built for them appears to be crashing down.

In one week, Vivian must leave her beloved elementary school and move back to her grandmother’s home in Bay Point because the Orinda Union School District is kicking her out.

Earlier this month, district officials hired a private investigator to find out if the 7-year-old girl actually lived in Orinda. They determined she did not, and they have given the energetic girl with long brown hair until Dec. 5 to leave her school.

“I’d be crying for a week,” Vivian said through her gaptoothed smile. “I love it there.”

The district’s actions have infuriated Maria’s boss, Miriam Storch, a 35-year-old working mother who grew up in the community and graduated from the same elementary school as Vivian. She considers Vivian and Maria part of her family and was flabbergasted when she received the first letter from the district Nov. 12.

“It never occurred to me that the school district would hire a private investigator,” Storch said. “Why wouldn’t they just come to us and talk to us about it if they had concerns?”

Storch responded with a three-page letter detailing how Vivian and her mother spend every weekday and night at the Orinda house, while on weekends they split time at Vivian’s grandmother’s house. Vivian has her own bedroom in the Orinda house with her clothing, toys and Bible. She even has her own bathroom where she got to pick the paint color: pink.

The mother and daughter have their own shelf for food in the refrigerator and their own cupboard in the kitchen to hold the girl’s cereal, vitamins and allergy medicine.

In her letter to the district, Storch explained that Vivian attends Santa Maria Church in Orinda, where she takes Communion classes, and she takes gymnastics and youth theater classes at the local community center.

It didn’t work.

Storch questions why the district began investigating Vivian after she followed all the rules to enroll this school year, providing Maria’s needed lease/employee agreement, credit card statement and pay stub for registration.

“We have no idea. I think they are accustomed to a traditional household,” Storch said. “Vivian’s situation is not traditional, and it piques their interest. I don’t play the race card lightly, but it’s painfully obvious (her school is) all Caucasians.”

Last school year, the district, with four elementary schools and a middle school, had less than 5 percent Hispanic students enrolled, while Vivian’s school had less than 4 percent, according to state education data.

Harold Freiman, the school district’s attorney, said he could not speak about the specific investigation, citing student confidentiality laws; however, he said the district would never discriminate.

“Each case is unique to the circumstance of the case,” he said. “This district wouldn’t move forward unless they found concrete evidence.”

Freiman said districts must ensure legitimate residency of students and balance individuals’ rights while “preserving the resources of the district for all the students.”

There is no appeal process over the district’s residency requirements.

He said it was not the first time the Orinda district has used a private investigator, and he said other districts use them, too.

“I think it varies from district to district; often it’s a lack of district staff to do the investigation themselves,” he said. Storch hired Maria, 44, as the family’s house cleaner in November 2012 when they lived in Alamo. After Storch gave birth to her son, she asked Maria to move in and become their live-in nanny. Vivian enrolled into San Ramon Valley Unified School District with no problems, Storch said.

The Storches moved to Orinda in July, and Maria and Vivian continued living with them. Vivian considers Storch’s 1-year-old son, Aron, her “little brother.”

“My husband and I work demanding, long hours, and I feel very blessed to have them,” Storch said.

Vivian’s grandmother in Bay Point does not speak English and doesn’t own a car, and while she is very close to Vivian, Maria has deep concerns about her schooling if she returned there.

“I think it’s best to have my daughter with me. She’s so happy here, and they treat us like a family,” Maria said. “It’s so important (to stay at her Orinda school) because I know that now she knows a lot more than she did before.”

In early November, the private investigator began talking to Bay Point neighbors asking if a young girl lived in the house, the mother said. Maria, who filed a domestic violence protective order against the girl’s father, also continues to get mail at the Bay Point home to keep her actual address a secret. This newspaper is not naming Vivian’s exact school nor using the mother and daughter’s full names to protect their identities.

Coincidentally, Vivian and her mother spent a significant amount of time at the Bay Point house in November to care for Vivian’s dying great-grandmother. She passed away Nov. 18.

Maria said the district’s investigator identified himself as a car insurance reviewer and asked to speak with her about a fictitious auto accident. He gave her his business card, and she recognized his name as the same investigator recommended to serve papers to her ex-husband when she obtained the restraining order. Fearing that her ex was trying to find out where she lived, she told the investigator that she lived in Bay Point.

It’s unclear if that exchange sealed Vivian’s fate, but once Maria and Storch found out the district hired the investigator, they were incensed.

“The district is going about this so sloppily that it has put her and our family at risk,” Storch said. “We were concerned for our privacy. It felt so violating.”

Storch, who has hired an attorney to represent the mother and daughter, wonders why the district never asked them for further documentation or to visit her house.

“They put so much effort into proving she lives elsewhere, and they’ve never come here to check if she lived here,” Storch said.

Meanwhile, the district sent the family a caregiver affidavit to fill out, where the Storches can claim they are Vivian’s caregivers. Doing that could give her another route to eligibility, but it’s not guaranteed.

“She absolutely is entitled to go to that school,” Storch said.

Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.