About 11 year ago, when I was still trying to figure out life, I wanted to continue with working with kids. At that time, my experience included working a lot of hours with the School Age Childcare Program at Rockford Schools. I drove by a new childcare center that was in the process being built and it had a great big sign in the front of it stating that they were hiring and one of the positions open was a school age childcare position. I thought this was right up my alley. So I applied and and was granted an interview. The interview took place at the home of the business owner where she was operating a home daycare. I was offered the position as school age childcare teacher and at this point I didn't realize what a life experience this was going to be.
This business owner was doing the obvious by expanding her home daycare into a commercial childcare setting. She was seeing dollar signs. If you are not familiar with the difference between a childcare center and a home daycare, there are many. Both obviously have to be licensed, but the differences are numerous. The required ratios are different and the requirements of a center are pretty detailed. Anyways, KidNation was a built to be a quality childcare facility and it was. To the perspective customers' eye, it was beautiful and it was the Cadillac of childcare facilities. The beauty of the facility drew in the customers. It hit capacity and had nearly 100 clients immediately without even advertising. The business did not even need to run an ad in the phone book (remember those!). It was crazy. Another nice feature of the center is that each parent had their own code to get in the front door to drop off and pick up their child. It was very secure.
So I was working the school age childcare room....by myself. Which was fine, except the ratio of staff to children in a school age childcare room with the Department of Human Services for the State of Minnesota was 15 children to one employee. I started to get alarmed when I was up to 19 children and hearing that there was no conversation of bringing in any additional staff. With the kids going to school during the day, this meant that I was going to be helping out in other areas throughout the center which was fine. What was not discussed was having me do all the cooking for center. Some people who know me know my Dinty Moore Beef Stew issue. All of a sudden I was cooking for almost 100 children. Heck, I was living alone at the time. This was quite an adjustment for me, but I did it. The food situation was interesting. The owner, Kristal Zimmerman, decided that she was only going to buy food from Reinhardt Food Service for some things and then have her husband go to Cub Foods to buy the rest of the food, including the milk. I wasn't the owner so I wasn't going to say anything.
Kristal Zimmerman was enjoying her new found financial success. She was buying a new GMC Yukon Denali with personalized license plates and taking many expensive trips during my tenure at the center. Again, that was her business, but it really was coming off in a manner where it was starting to come off that Kristal was more in it for the money than working with kids.
So one day I was serving lunch, probably that shitty beef stew, in the preschool room. As I got done serving the food, I stayed in the room to help watch the preschoolers during lunch time. This is the point when everything changed. I saw Kristal, the owner, sitting with a preschool child who did not like the food being served. This was unacceptable to Kristal and she grabbed that child's mouth and pushed the cheeks to open the child's mouth and force fed this child. While she was doing this, she stating that the food costs her a lot of money and none of it was going to go to waste. This shook me up literally. I couldn't believe what I saw and I wasn't the only one on staff that noticed these actions. I didn't know what to do. I was young, I needed the job, and I had never been in this situation before. Everyone who saw it knew it was wrong, but we didn't really know how to handle this because it was the OWNER who was doing it. Usually when you see some issue with a co-worker, you go to your boss or supervisor and report it. She was the boss and nobody knew what to do. For the next week, it continued, and then she was starting to yell at the children when it was nap time and they were not going to sleep right away. There were 21 people on staff working for Kristal Zimmerman, and 17 of them decided to report her to the Department of Human Services...including me.
So the next thing I know, I go to work one day, and there is an investigator from Hennepin County at the center and I was to be interviewed to follow up on what I reported. Things really started getting strange when the interview was being conducted in our employee break room where there was an intercom system that was linked to Kristal personal office. To show the true lack of intelligence of Kristal Zimmerman, there would be a light that would come on when she turned on the intercom from her office. The light was not a dim one, and the investigator caught her every time she activated that intercom. It got to a point during my interview with DHS, that the investigator got out of her seat and went up to the intercom and said, "I know you are listening and if you continue to do this, I will take your employees off the property to interview them." This was that "oh shit" moment when you knew that it was hitting the fan.
I reported the force feeding, and I also reported the ratio concerns I had. After the interviews were completed with all the employees, the Department of Human Services had determined that it was time to get the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department involved and open an official investigation. What this meant for the short term was that Kristal Zimmerman was not allowed to be on her business property during operating hours during the course of the investigation. If you are familiar with how the state and counties operate, it isn't exactly fast. So this investigation went on for months. The sad thing about this is that it gave Kristal the opportunity to spend more of her money by taking many trips. When they were in town, she would send her husband to the center with groceries or her mother to check on things. It was awkward to say the least.
So what about the parents of the children? Well, the employees didn't want to quit, because at this point if you were to quit you would be admitting to Kristal that you were one of the whistle blowers, so everyone stayed working there through the investigation, which DHS actually advised us to do. I don't remember what their reasoning was, but it was advised. The parents were absolutely disgusted with Kristal Zimmerman, but they loved the staff that cared for their children. The one holiday season I had working there was like the best Christmas I ever had as far as gifts go. I ended up with like $500.00 in gift cards, it was ridiculous. The parents were OK with having their children go to the center because they knew Kristal was not allowed on the premises and they trusted the staff, especially after they knew the staff had the courage to report the actions of Kristal Zimmerman.
So for a while, things kind of died down. Operations were going as normal as they could've gone, and one day during the late afternoon when the majority of parents were picking up their children, the doorbell rang. The doorbell usually only rang when there was a perspective new client wanting to enroll their child(ren) or it was a relative picking up a child that did not have a code to get into the building. When the doorbell rang, a staff had to physically go to the front door and let that person into the building. So this time when the doorbell rang, I was closest to the front door and I went to go answer it and I didn't expect who had arrived. It was a KSTP Channel 5 news reporter. I opened the door and asked if I could help her and she asked for Kristal Zimmerman. I said she is not here and I got an interesting response. This was just after 4:30 p.m. when this reporter showed up and she informed me that she was going live at 5:00 p.m. and this was going to be the top story on their newscast. I just about dropped logs. I went and informed our staff member who was "managing" the center. Of course, the newscaster wanted interviews from staff and everyone was afraid to go on the news and talk. So they stood on the property line and interviewed many parents as they drove in to pick up their children. A couple of days later, I was getting calls on my personal cell phone from FOX 9 News out of Minneapolis wanting an interview about the investigation. This was crazy and it was out of control.
One of the parents that spoke to the news reporter lived across the street from the center, two days later all four of her tires were flattened. And this was a paying active client. One night after work, I went out with my friends and I left my car at the center for a couple of hours. The next day when I was driving through the town I lived in, my entire front wheel came off my car (rim and all) and shredded my front fender. When I got the vehicle back to my home, I checked the other tires and three of the five lug nuts were loosened on every tire. This was just the first tire that happened to come off. After this had happened, I was in panic mode. I didn't know how this was going to turn out and I didn't see how it could've had a good ending. Whatever the hell a good ending to this mess was.
When the report from the Department of Human Services was released. All the employee names were not identified in the report for protection to the employees. However, what hung me out to dry was when the report said that the school age child care teacher reported numerous out-of-ratio violations and I was the only school age child care teacher on staff, even Kristal Zimmerman could put two and two together on that one. So in the State of Minnesota, an employee is protected as a whistle blower for 90 days. On the 91st day after I reported her, I was working at the center like normal. Then all of a sudden these two big men in suits came in through a back door and approached me. They were Kristal Zimmerman's lawyers. I don't think I have ever felt as intimidated in my life as I did that very moment. The started to ask me questions and I began to answer. As they continued to ask me questions, I got very scared as I had never been through anything like this. I told them that I had to go to the bathroom. Instead I went into our break room and called my aunt who was working for an employment attorney at the time. She informed me that I should not answer any of their questions and they may tell me that I am being insubordinate by refusing the questions. So I went back into the room where the her lawyers were and sat back down at the table. They asked me the next question and I informed them that I was not going to answer anymore of their questions. The lawyers did tell me that I was being insubordinate and they were going to have to call Kristal to see how she wanted to handle it. They called her, talked with her briefly, and then gave me the phone. She told me to talk to her lawyers and I told her that I was not going to and she followed it up with this, "You are now being insubordinate and you need to get off my property immediately." So that was that.
In the end, there was another childcare about eight miles away that was struggling, but wanted me to come in and help get the center back on track. I knew as soon as the parents at KidNation knew I was gone and only eight miles away, they would start pulling their kids from KidNation. I played this move very carefully and made sure I talked to nobody about pulling their kids from KidNation. With all the other events that took place, including the purposeful actions towards my car, I figured she would do anything to me in response to me talking to me. At that time, I was even afraid of her showing up at my home after she slashed the tires on one of her own client's car. The story concludes with the other employees finding out where I went to and were interested in joining me at the new location. Two other employees that I worked with, along with myself and the parent whose tires were slashed actually purchased the center that I moved onto in a four way partnership. About two weeks after assuming ownership of the new center that was eight miles away from KidNation, Kristal Zimmerman sued me and the other three partners citing that we were violating a no-competition clause. I had signed nothing mentioning a non-compete clause and she was suing for in excess of $50,000. Again my mind was blown. We seeked legal advice, which my share cost a couple of thousand dollars. We went to court and the judge basically laughed at her. She continued to try legal action until she could no longer afford to pay her attorneys. The timing of the ownership was not right, however, as I just financially wasn't prepared to do this. I ended up with this result after what started with my just wanting a job at a childcare center as a school age child care teacher. After six months at the new center, I took a month leave of absence to help move some relatives up to Minnesota from Louisiana. When I returned, I chose to leave the business and sold back my share of the business to the others.
As far as the final result of the investigation from the Department of Human Services and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. She was found guilty to the maltreatment of minors. The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, whose investigator often referred to her as KidNazi, gave her two options. The first was to continue to own KidNation Childcare Center and face criminal charges or sell the center and their will be no criminal charges with the condition that she could no longer work with children again. A few years later, her oldest child was killed by being struck by lightning in the front yard of her home. She then went on to move to Stillwater, Minnesota and starting a business featuring fetishes and fantasies where she referred to herself as a "Taboo Goddess". The city of Stillwater thought it was prostitution and cited her with a crime. Despite the money it cost me, and the experience I went through, the payoff was knowing that she could never work with children again and traumatize any more children.
To see the WCCO story about her Stillwater, Minnesota incident you can click this link: Stillwater 'Taboo Goddess' Charged
#justiceserved
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