A beloved Santa Clara County institution, Walden West has been a rite of passage for thousands of elementary students who eagerly await spending a week at the environmental camp in the West Valley foothills.
But an investigation by this newspaper found that through budget-skimping, ill-advised practices and lax oversight, bucolic Walden West may have created the perfect playground for a sexual predator.
This month’s arrest of a popular camp employee revealed how the camp run by the Santa Clara County Office of Education failed to follow its policies to ensure children’s safety, relied too heavily on young volunteers, and forbade parents from visiting — all major concerns, according to child advocates.
“I’m very upset, sick to my stomach that my daughter was in harm’s way,” said Santa Clara parent Candi Hankins. “My daughter will not be going to any more camps.”
How could a respected program have failed to protect the 15,000 children who visit it annually? The county Office of Education, which has run Walden West for decades, still has no answers but has hired an outside investigator to figure that out.
Edgar Covarrubias-Padilla — known in camp as “Papa Bear” — was arrested May 7 and charged with possessing and manufacturing child pornography and molesting a child.
“I’m appalled at the actions that this person is alleged to have taken,” said Jon Gundry, the county Office of Education superintendent. “I’m taking the investigation very seriously.”
Covarrubias-Padilla’s arrest and the backlash from parents have thrown the usually low-profile county Office of Education into crisis mode. Dozens of parents have contacted this newspaper, angry with what they view as the office’s inadequate response to the arrest and failure to protect their children.
The office lost credibility when Gundry initially asserted that Covarrubias-Padilla’s job involved no contact with children. In fact, as scores of former campers recognized “Papa Bear’s” photo in the news, parents realized to their horror that he indeed was very familiar to their children.
And the outrage grew Thursday when a U.S. senator alleged that — five months before the arrest — federal officials were quietly investigating Covarrubias-Padilla as part of a child exploitation probe.
The county Office of Education wasn’t informed of that investigation. But for years, the camp failed to follow its rules that no adult may be alone with a child. At both the Saratoga and Cupertino campuses of Walden West, those rules were not enforced until after Covarrubias-Padilla’s arrest. As the night manager at the Cupertino camp, he was the only adult on duty among the pre-teen campers and their high-school volunteer leaders. Teachers who accompanied their classes might participate in camp lessons on photosynthesis or plate tectonics during the day, but stayed in separate teacher quarters at night.
Every night homesick, ill or disruptive children were taken by volunteers or teachers — or walked alone — to “the Hub,” the camp office where he was stationed. Kids sometimes stayed alone with him there.
“Children were told from day one that if you got a nightmare you could go to the Hub and go to “Papa Bear” and receive comfort and support,” said Erin Evers, a Santa Clara Unified District parent whose boys attended Walden West in April. In pre-camp orientation sessions, parents also were told that “Papa Bear” was the go-to night guy.
Since the arrest, the county Office of Education has instituted the “Rule of 3”: Whenever a child is present with an adult, another person — child or adult — must also be there. It has added a security officer at each campus.
“Nobody wants this to happen in their system,” said Darcie Green, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Education, about the alleged victimization of children. “Right now, our number one focus is protection of the kids.”
During the school year, children attend Walden West for a week with their fifth- or sixth-grade class. They stay in oblong cabins with about two dozen campers and one or two cabin leaders, almost always high schoolers. Those volunteers simply need their school’s permission to take a week off school, aren’t otherwise screened, and receive a few hours’ training.
With the weekly turnover in teen leaders, Walden West’s staff lacked continuity and experience that would have enabled someone to recognize a pattern over time, or might have empowered a volunteer to question odd practices.
Unlike schools, children’s camps don’t need accreditation — although the best ones receive it. Walden West has select county permits, such as for its kitchens and pool, but it appears that neither the state nor county public health departments licenses the camp as a whole.
And if Walden West sought accreditation, its arrangements would fall far short of best practices established by the American Camp Association, which recommends that 80 percent of the staff be at least 18 years old, that there be one staffer for every eight campers ages 9 to 14, and that at least 40 percent of staff return every year.
While many of Walden West’s program instructors are longtime staffers, many others are hired as temporary employees, without benefits and often working limited hours, staffers say.
Even while juggling waves of volunteers and employees, the camp appears to have kept incomplete records. Gundry said it has no database of children who attended summer camp and thus hasn’t notified previous summer families of Covarrubias-Padilla’s arrest.
Gundry and administrators were initially uncertain about what jobs Covarrubias-Padilla performed, because his employee file didn’t reflect his real role. Camp director Anita Parsons misled her superiors about his duties, Gundry said, and she has since been placed on leave. Efforts to reach Parsons were unsuccessful.
Before Covarrubias-Padilla became night manager in 2013, he had been volunteering since at least 2011, including as an overnight cabin leader or as a counselor. He reportedly applied for a work permit in 2012, when he sought a stay of deportation through the so-called Dream Act, designed to offer a reprieve to illegal immigrants brought to this country as children. He has a work permit on file, Gundry said — although federal immigration officials announced Thursday that they would detain him whenever he’s released from custody. He is in Santa Clara County Jail in lieu of $200,000 bail.
According to the office, he passed a background check — a fingerprint scan by the company LiveScan — though it’s not clear when. He lived in staff housing on the Saratoga campus, but the Office of Education could not explain how he ended up living there.
The camp forbid students from bringing cell phones and parents from visiting during the week, causing both fright and worry for children staying away from their families for the first time.
That isolation raises a red flag with child advocates.
“We absolutely do not recommend that parents send their kids anywhere where (parents) are not allowed to go,” said Irene van der Zande, executive director of Kidpower, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit dedicated to teaching kids and families how to stay safe. “There should never be a time when you could not call home. You want kids to be able to ask for help.”
But at Walden West in Cupertino, the person responsible for helping children in distress is now the one suspected of preying on them.
“I really trusted the camp. We have a lot of good memories there.” said Tonya Raybon, of Sunnyvale, who herself attended Walden West as a child, as did her fifth-grader and 18-year-old. But she’s very unhappy with officials’ response to the crisis. “I think they’re covering for themselves.”
Contact Sharon Noguchi at 408-271-3775. Follow her at Twitter.com/noguchionk12. Contact Katie Nelson at 408-920-5006 and follow her at Twitter.com/katienelson210.
