The former treasurer of Vista Pop Warner was sentenced this week to a year in jail for draining roughly $114,000 from the youth sports league, leaving the organization flat broke and scrambling.

Rachel Owens, 42 and a middle-school math teacher, siphoned the money over the course of 18 months while she served as a volunteer board member in charge of the league’s books. She pleaded guilty in April to five felony charges, including embezzlement, identity theft and grand theft, and agreed to repay what she stole.

The year-long jail sentence had been part of Owens’ plea deal, but on Tuesday Vista Superior Court Judge Michael Popkins also sentenced her to five years probation — up from the three years recommended by the case probation officer.

Popkins also ordered Owens to repay the league $250 a month — well more than the $100 a month that had been recommended — and to attend credit counseling classes.


The prosecutor and Owens’ defense attorney said the money Owens embezzled went mostly to pay down her extensive credit card debt and to cover living expenses.

Owens, whose son played in the league, stole about $101,000 by writing checks to herself, and pocketed an additional $13,000 in cash from league fundraisers including snack-bar sales, according to Deputy District Attorney Anna Winn.

Winn said the theft scarred the players.

“It’s so devastating to the kids to realize that another mom in the league would betray them,” Winn said Wednesday.


Winn said that investigators will give the league the roughly $5,000 they seized from Owens’ bank account. No other money was recovered.

The thefts started in April 2014, about a month after Owens started doing the books for the nonprofit league, which serves more than 300 children in its football and cheerleading programs.

The crime was uncovered last November, after Owens tried to get a line of credit using the personal information of the league’s president, Gabriela Blas. The league soon discovered its money was completely wiped out.

In court Wednesday, Blas told the judge that she did not believe Owens was remorseful, and called the defendant “manipulative, a liar and an emotional predator who will say or do anything to gain others trust.”


Owens’ attorney, Peter Liss, said Wednesday that his client, married with three children,“has tremendous guilt and shame.” He said the theft came when Owens, the family breadwinner, found herself “in over her head with consumer debt.”

“Ms. Owens was so overburdened with her own economic crisis that she did not think through what she was doing,” Liss said. “She lost everything she had as a result.”

Owens was arrested Feb. 24 at Guajome Park Academy, a Vista charter school where she taught seventh- and eighth-grade math. Liss said she will lose her teaching credential.

This is the second time Vista Pop Warner had been hit by embezzlement by a volunteer treasurer. In 2003, that volunteer, also a parent of a player, was sentenced to 120 days in jail and ordered to pay back $37,000.


teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com