$100,000 Reward- The Pricetag for Justice Part 2

2009-11-03T07:41:30Z

This is part two of the story about the homeless looking man that is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who can disprove one fact and that fact is:

Charles Nordby turned Tom Raley’s company around when Raley's was going bankrupt in the early '70s. It was his expertise in the grocery business and his proven security program implemented at Raley's back in 1973 that made Raley’s the success they are today.

"There was so much external and internal theft taking place at Raley's back then, they simply could not have stay in business," Nordby said before passing away in 1996.

In 1973, Nordby traveled from Sonoma County to have a meeting with Pete Stathos, the president of the now defunct Vans Markets to discuss the idea of implementing Nordby's profit increasing program that he designed and was promoting in Northern California. This was the program that could save any struggling retailer from going out of business.

Stathos missed the meeting because he was on the golf course that day. Nordby decided to call another Sacramento retailer that he had heard was in financial trouble so he called the Raley's main office located at 1515 20th Street and asked to speak to the president. The man who answered the phone said "speaking." At the time it never occurred to Nordby that Tom Raley was so broke, Chuck Collings, the president of Raley's, is responsible for answering the phone that day.

Nordby briefly explained to Collings he had a proven profit increasing program that would give the Raley's company its highest profits ever. With nothing to lose, Collings invited Nordby to come to the old run down office on 20th Street to explain once again what he could do and how his program could help Raley's.

Once there, he sits down with Collings, Vice President Jim Teel (Joyce Raley Teel's husband) and advertising man Frank McMinn and explains to these three men exactly what his program is all about.

On that day, these three men were given a ray of hope that the company they headed up may not go out of business after all. But if Raley’s did go out of business, they had just met the perfect scapegoat to take the fall for Tom Raley's business failing.

It would appear at this point in his life, Tom Raley must have already accepted the fact that there was no hope for Raley's survival because he had two inexperienced men running his company. Plus Raley had taken himself out of the picture as far as the daily operation of the company was concerned.

Without Tom Raley's knowledge or his approval of the hiring of Nordby, they agree to let Nordby test his program in six of Raley's most unprofitable stores. At that time, nearly every one of Tom Raley's stores were unprofitable, but these six stores were the worst.

In the summer of 1973, when Nordby was given the go ahead to implement his program, Raley’s did not have the money to even start his program in these six stores. Nordby was forced to find a private investor in San Francisco to loan him the money so that he could finance his program at Raley’s.

Within the first quarter (3 months) of this new program, these six losing stores were turning such a high profit, Collings, Teel and McMinn decided right then that they had to have Nordby's program immediately put into place throughout the rest of the chain.

They also decided they wanted to hire Nordby as an employee rather than a consultant. After much consideration, Nordby agreed to work exclusively for Raley’s for a base pay and bonuses based on the success of his program which he knew would be incredible because he knew his program would not only save the company but give them tremendous profits of which his bonuses would be based on.

In order to retain Nordby’s services and their new found hope, Raley's operators agreed to the bonuses if his program continued to produce the same success they had already seen, they just had no idea just how successful it and they were all going to be.
Nordby believed Chuck Collings would keep his promise because he touted himself to be a man of God and that his word was his bond and Collings always invited Nordby to his Friday night Bible study, so Nordby assumed that he was a man of his word. Nordby also believed Jim Teel would keep his promise because he was Tom Raley's son in-law and he also believed Frank McMinn would keep his promise because he and Tom Raley were good friends. Not one of these men ever told Tom Raley about the outside consultant that they had hired. Nordby later discovered they never intended to keep their promises to him either, but rather used him to save Tom Raley's company from bankruptcy while they took the credit for Tom Raley's success.

They hired my father in 1973, the same year I became a senior at El Molino High School in Sonoma County. He was such an incredible father, he chose not to move the family to the Sacramento area until after my senior year and graduation. Because of the scope of the task before him to ensure the success of Raley's, he had to stay in Sacramento for most of my senior year and our family would only see him on occasional weekends when he had to just get away from the glaring problems of Raley's mismanagement that he had to deal with on a daily basis. I remember him telling me some of the stories of the things he encountered that were almost unbelievable, like the time he went into a Raley's store and saw nearly every employee, including the manager, stealing from the company. This was why Raley's was going out of business. Theft was rampant. It didn't take long for Nordby to figure out that everyone thought Raley's was going bankrupt so they all were getting their piece of the pie before it did.
Employees were stealing chain wide, bread vendors, soda vendors, beer vendors, meat companies, milk companies, egg companies and even one of Tom Raley's best friends were all stealing from him and he didn't even know it. One of the first things Nordby had to do was re-write and re-create new company policies that would close the loopholes to prevent anymore drains on the profits.

One of the most incredible aspects of this story is the fact that Tom Raley went to his grave in 1992 not ever knowing the man who saved his company, not knowing what had happened to create the turnaround in 1973 or how he even become a billionaire. That is absolutely mind boggling. Has this ever happened in history where a person had no clue whatsoever as to how they got rich?
And what makes this even that much more incredible is the fact that while Nordby was staying in Sacramento, he was given a free room at the Marina Inn located on the banks of the Sacramento River. The Marina Inn was another losing business venture of Tom Raley and they both lived there during the same time period of July of 1973 through June of 1974. Even though Tom Raley may have seen Nordby come and go during that time period, he didn't even know who Charles Nordby was and what was his business in Sacramento.

Coming next in part 3 of this series,.....

The year is 1974, The money is poring in. It is party time for Raley's.

It's bonus time! But Raley's Success by deception kicks into first gear!

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$100,000 Reward- The Pricetag for Justice Part 2