One Fair Wage by Saru Jayaraman

Author:Saru Jayaraman [Jayaraman, Saru]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Debbie and Marshan

Working While Incarcerated

“It’s literally slave labor”

Debbie Leggio was born and raised on Long Island, New York. Her father was fourth-generation Irish American, and her mother was third-generation Norwegian. They met through the military—Debbie’s father was an Army captain, and her mother was a USO dancer. They met at an Army dance and ended up having six children together. Debbie was the youngest.

Debbie’s father was an alcoholic and died when she was nine years old, and her grandmother passed six months later. Her oldest sister, who had been living with her grandmother, was recuperating from a terrible car accident that left her permanently disabled. For most of Debbie’s childhood, her immediate family consisted of Debbie, her mother, and her much older sister.

The three women survived off her father’s social security and veteran’s benefits and a small life insurance policy that did not last. Despite these challenges, Debbie thrived in school. “I enjoyed school. I did very well in high school—I was in all the extracurricular activities. I was captain of the kick line [the dance team], I was in all the musicals, I played volleyball.” Debbie got accepted into a college in Pennsylvania but had to come back to New York after just one semester. “We had lost our house. I had to come back to help get everything situated, help us move into an apartment. I went to the community college and started working.” While in high school, Debbie had been working at a local deli owned by her sister’s friend. When she came back from Pennsylvania, she returned to the deli to keep working. She met the deli owner’s nephew at the deli and ended up marrying him. “We will have been married thirty-three years this year.”

Some years later, Debbie found work as a bookkeeper, and then a comptroller, and ultimately settled at a nonprofit organization in Long Island for many years managing their accounts. Over a period of eight years, from 2001 to 2009, Debbie moved her way up in the organization from staff accountant to director of finance.

In 2009, Debbie’s husband got a job with a private company doing air traffic controlling in California. With their son now grown up and gone to college, Debbie and her husband moved to Tracy, in Northern California, and Debbie once again started working in finance for a nonprofit in San Francisco.

It was at this time that Debbie received a phone call from the district attorney back in Long Island; the state was pursuing Debbie’s conviction for embezzling funds while working at the nonprofit in Long Island. The executive director of the nonprofit had been engaged in some inappropriate activity—hiring family members, falsifying board minutes, inflating her salary, and failing to oversee the finances. When the executive director was terminated, a forensic audit was conducted that revealed Debbie’s actions as well. “I was charged with grand larceny. I had been in a bad situation and made poor choices. I take full responsibility for my actions. I went through years of therapy.

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