Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "joyce raley teel"

East Sac poised for Good Eats

2010-08-20T01:05:07Z

Raley's heir Michael Teel and partners will open a new cafe, wine bar and market called Good Eats in East Sacramento Monday.

Similar to Selland's Market-Café and Corti Brothers, which operate on other end of East Sacramento, the kitchen will offer hot and cold takeout foods, wine and coffee. The specialty grocery will include wine, butchered meats, seafood, cheeses, bakery items and flowers.

On Thursday, Good Eats official Julie Rollofson led food and wine tastings to prepare for a soft opening set for 6 a.m. Monday. The opening follows a lengthy renovation of what used to be Andiamo restaurant and the Rosemont Grill at 3145 Folsom Blvd., near Alhambra Boulevard.

The establishment promises to be the flagship store for the Good Eats company founded by Teel and venture capitalist Michael Ashker, who partnered previously to run Prosper Media in Midtown. Ashker also founded Internet companies Healthaxis and Courtlink.

Teel — grandson of Raley's founder and son of its owner, Joyce Raley Teel — was named president and chief executive officer of the West Sacramento-based Raley's grocery chain last January after an eight-year absence. He'd also served as Raley's CEO between 1996 and 2002.

Teel's original plan to open his first Good Eats specialty market at 5810 Folsom Blvd. — a retail space long occupied by Corti Brothers — in 2008 met with stiff opposition from locals because it would have forced the Italian gourmet shop to move. Teel canceled those plans and opened several Good Eats markets in Arizona.

Good Eats was previously scheduled to open last December. The building's brick and brown adobe-style exterior is accented with an outdoor terrace, new landscaping and trellis work.

The official opening will be held in September. Hours are expected to be 6 a.m. - 8 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 6 a.m. - 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 7 a.m. - 9 p.m. Saturdays and 7 a.m. - 8 p.m. Sundays, said Rollofson, also Teel's fiancée.

Photos by Suzanne Hurt, a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

Is The Sacramento City Council Being "Greenwashed"? Part 2

2010-01-12T22:57:29Z

In case you missed this earlier, let me clarify the newly coined term "greenwash". If whitewashing is to 'gloss over or cover up a crime or a scandal', then "greenwashing" would be the use of money in an attempt to gloss over or cover up a crime or scandal.

When our family read that the new wing at the Crocker Art Museum was going to be named The Teel Family Pavilion, we became unglued. This is the same family that owns the Raley’s Supermarket chain of stores. Joyce Raley Teel’s $13 million dollar donation enabled them the honor of having the new addition named after them. As you know from my previous articles about Raley’s and the Teel’s, a crime was committed against my father and our family has been seeking justice on his behalf ever since his death.

Since our father’s $592 civil lawsuit(case 544344) against the Teel’s and Raley’s for “fraud and unjust enrichment”, they have spent over $33 million dollars to have their names placed on public buildings. The Thomas P. Raley Boys and Girls Club, Raley Field and now they are using their money to get their name placed on the prestigious new $100 million addition to the Crocker Art Museum. According to Raley’s own website: “Raley's ranks Number One in the Sacramento Business Journal's list of Corporate Philanthropy”. In our opinion their philanthropy is Joyce’s way of trying to cover her company’s crime and “greenwash” the Sacramento community into not believing Charles Nordby’s story.

What Joyce is doing reminds me of what the Joker did in the 1989 Batman movie. After the part he went into the art museum, wrote his name on the wall and desecrated the museum, he danced before a crowd of people in pandemonium and tossed money at them as he said: "Who do you trust!" Hubba, hubba, hubba! Money, money, money! Who do you trust? Me? I'm giving away free money." I don't think Joyce is in any condition to dance to a Prince song but she is very capable of distributing money to whoever she feels she needs to.

After reading our family’s letter to the Sacramento City Council it will be interesting to see if they will be “greenwashed” by the $13 million dollar donation from Joyce Raley Teel so she could have her family name placed on the new building. We believe that the new Crocker Art Museum addition should be named after Marcy and Mort Friedman, a couple who rightfully deserve it.

December 21, 2009
Mayor Kevin Johnson
915 I Street, 5th Floor
Mail Code 09100
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Mayor Kevin Johnson,

Our family has been fighting a horrible injustice against our father Charles Nordby for over 18 years.

Our father is the man who saved Tom Raley’s company from going bankrupt in 1973 and made the success of the Raley’s Supermarket chain a reality for today. Without his services Raley’s would have been out of business by 1974.

He was defrauded by Raley’s of what they promised and what he was entitled to. Since then he was also defrauded by Raley’s attorney’s at Downy, Brand, Seymour and Rower, the Sacramento Superior Courts and the local news media.

Our fathers lawsuit stated that all of Raley’s and Jim and Joyce Raley Teel’s wealth attained since 1973 was achieved under fraud and unjust enrichment from his services and expertise in the industry.

Raley’s has gone to great lengths to portray their success in an honorable way. They have influenced the news media to ignore this true story about our father who should have been given recognition for his outstanding and unparalleled accomplishments in Raley’s success that spills into every community they do business in. He is a local hero who has been made into that of a villain.

Now they are flaunting this fraud with their ill-gotten wealth by making extremely large donations to worthy causes with hope that it will overshadow this crime against our father. The most recent slap in our face is the $13 million dollar donation to the Crocker Art Museum for the new addition that will enable the Teel family to have this new building named “The Teel Family Pavilion.” That in itself should be considered a crime! The Sacramento City Council was made aware of this crime earlier this year(copy enclosed), and yet regardless to their awareness, the Teel’s were able to buy their name on the Crocker’s new wing.

This is just another disregard for justice for our family and if the City of Sacramento wants to honor the family whose entire wealth is founded on the fraud against our father then we will make sure that October 10th, 2010 is not just the “Grand Opening” of the new wing of the Teel Family Pavilion at the Crocker Art Museum, but a day of justice for our family. Justice our dad should have received, and was entitled to receive while he was alive, but denied by the wealth and so called power the Teel’s hold in this community.

We will not stop until the Teel’s resolve this issue and the Nordby family feels that justice has prevailed. We hope this doesn’t become a more confrontational issue before they come to their senses that will enable them to make moral and ethical decisions to settle this matter.
If you need to contact us please do so at: truth@hungry4justice.com

Sincerely.

The Family of Charles Nordby

Sources: Sacramento Superior Court case #544344, www.hungry4justice.com, www.raleysexposed.com,

Fair Use of new Crocker building from Group 10's website, Photo of Raley Field compliments of Frank Nordby, .

$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!

Homeless Looking Man offers a $100,000 Reward

2009-11-01T05:11:32Z

There are two things about the man in the picture that you would not believe unless I revealed them to you in this article. First of all, the man in the picture is not homeless. He is my brother Frank Nordby who has attended a couple of the Sacramento Press' workshops with me. It is hard to imagine just by looking at his appearance that this man is not only training to qualify for the Boston Marathon but he is also offering a $100,000 reward in his race for justice.

Frank has been running as long as I can remember. In fact I remember him running after me as a child whenever I would pull some 'little brother" gag on him. Frank was able to palm a basketball in high school and was actually very good at shooting hoops as well as all the other sports he was involved in. Out of the nine children in our family Frank was the most athletic of us all.

Over the years he learned that running was very therapeutic for him and he always makes sure that he gets his daily dose of therapy in the many miles he runs every day. He is in good health and with his long hair and beard he has been called "Forrest Gump" on many occasions by passerby’s who catch him on his trek through the highways and byways of Northern CA and the Sacramento area.

Franks endurance has also helped him in his eighteen year chase and quest for justice in one of the biggest crimes in Sacramento's history. Since the advent of the internet, more and more people have heard about this crime because there are currently two websites that publicly reveal it. It’s a crime that involves those who are part of the who's who in business, judges in the courts, in the news media and in the religious community. This article will begin the unveiling of people who have somehow and someway become involved in this crime, generally through the subtle influence of money that has snagged them in this incredible web of deception that has killed their credibility.

I have decided it is time for Sacramento to begin reading a story that has probably been the most media suppressed story of all time. There is a term that rightly defines what have been the actions of the news media and it is called a “conspiracy of silence.” Which is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
a secret agreement to keep silent about an occurrence, situation, or subject
especially in order to promote or protect selfish interests
This is not to be confused with a conspiracy theory whereby people are made out to be crazy without sufficient proof or evidence to their claims. On the contrary, this story is backed by historical accounts, court documents, tax records, divorce records, the written word as well as the spoken word. Two of the most persuasive elements to this story are the preponderance of the evidence and the silence that has permeated from within those who know the story is true.

Now with The Sacramento Press, this conspiracy of silence will be broken and the story will be told against the will of the wealthiest family in town. This story will create a stir because it shakes the powers that be and will be contrary to everything most people have been told by the news media for the last thirty-six years.

This story may never get the attention that it should get and rightfully deserves. Locally, all the news reporting companies have gone to great lengths to help cover up this crime and why shouldn't they? Isn't it only a crime against one man? No! This crime is also against the public who put their trust in the news media to tell the truth at any cost. Who expect unbiased reporting of the news that neither censors nor silences. This is one story where the news media has actually become a major part of the story. We hope that the Sacramento Bee does not have any influence on the Sacramento Press concerning this story.

Because this story has been in the making for thirty-six years, it is impossible to write one article about all of the people, places and events that went into making this an incredible story. It would be too lengthy as one article for the Sacramento Press, so I must divide it up into two or three easily read portions.

Many of the high profile news stories and the day-by-day courtroom proceedings in the last twenty five years have been influenced by money and fame and the power that follows them. This story is no different except for the fact that the people that this story is about are also major advertisers in the newspapers and magazines and on the television and radio. This is why none of the news media in Sacramento can afford to tell you this true story, and when you read the following email from a local reporter in the Sacramento area, you will understand why you are reading this story in this venue instead of the front page of the Sacramento Bee or making the headlines on the evening news.

“Hello Mr. Nordby,
No, I have never heard this story - what a horrid story it is. However, very sadly, I am not surprised. There are people who will do absolutely anything to gain wealth, and/or hang on to wealth (power). Crushing another person seems to be nothing but collateral damage for them.
I am interested in your story. My columns are not just rhetoric - I write what I believe. As you have already discovered, the threat of Raley's financial resources is huge. While I cannot and will not jeopardize (her company), I am interested in finding the proper venue for your story.
That could take some time and research. It is a compelling story but as I previously said, most people in Sacramento have too much to lose given the size, scope and far-reaching tentacles of the Raley's family. I still think it needs to be a book and not done by a newspaper - a newspaper would and/or could lose all of their advertisers. A newspaper …..could be shut down in one day by Raley's.”
Katy G.

If you have never seen the movie "Flash of Genius", we highly recommend that you do. This is the movie about the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper for the automobile. His idea was stolen by the Ford Motor Company and then he had to spend more than 12 years of his life to convince people and a jury that he was the inventor of this incredible idea.
Flash of Genius is similar to the Charles Nordby Story!
The difference is, Charles Nordby ended up dying trying to convince everyone that he was the man that saved Tom Raley's company from bankruptcy in 1973. Raley's had the big attorney's and everyone they needed in their pockets to make sure that he did not get his day in court, nor that his story ever got any news media attention.

Now that you know that this is a story about Raley’s, Joyce Raley Teel and the news media, I am sure you are beginning to put the pieces together and will want to know why Frank Nordby is hungry for justice and more about the $100,000 he is offering as a reward to anyone who can disprove the story he is seeking justice for. Part two of this story will be made available shortly on the Sacramento Press.

"Those with little or no money cannot afford justice,
and those with money can avoid justice."
Jack Nordby