Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and his wife, Michelle.
Rocky and Michelle Delgadillo: If they were celebrities, the press would fill us in on any drinking. But he’s a city attorney and she’s his wife.
I have long bemoaned the fact that the press discloses the drinking and using foibles of celebrities and sports figures while generally failing to report any evidence of use in law enforcers, politicians, CEOs, attorneys and doctors. In my files of likely and confirmed alcoholics, for every one celebrity suspected strictly on behavioral clues four or five are confirmed addicts; of every four or five law enforcers suspected, I have only one in whom I can prove alcoholism. Yet, the behaviors are similar in all those under suspicion, celebrities and non-celebrities alike.
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and his wife Michelle are the latest examples of this phenomenon. They offered a belated mea culpa for an incident three years ago, which was brought to light when Rocky pushed for more jail time for Paris Hilton after her (temporary) premature release by Sheriff Lee Baca. Hilton was incarcerated because she was caught driving on a suspended license. Rocky admitted that his wife was behind the wheel of his city-owned GMC Yukon SUV when she backed out of a parking space and hit a pole while visiting a doctor in 2004–after her license had been suspended.
Several behavioral indications of alcoholism or codependency in one or both were evident from the start:
1. City policy prohibits family members of employees from driving city-owned vehicles and from using such vehicles for any personal use whatsoever. Rocky, through a spokesman, told reporters that city ethics guidelines are unclear about whether rules prohibiting family members from using such vehicles apply to elected officials. Yet Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote that he read both the municipal code and the L.A. Ethics Commission policy and found absolutely no ambiguity about the prohibition, which applies to all city officials.
2. The Delgadillos allowed taxpayers to foot the $1,222 repair bill resulting from the 2004 incident, repaying it only now, when caught red-handed.
3. As mentioned, Michelle was driving despite the fact that her license had been suspended. Normal people–especially wives of law enforcers–are unlikely to engage in such illegal behavior.
4. Her license had been suspended a year earlier when she couldn’t provide proof of insurance to another driver after being involved in another accident. Several accidents in a short period of time are an excellent clue to alcohol or other-drug addiction.
5. Rocky told reporters at a press conference he had never been uninsured, while an aide told Lopez that he bought himself a policy in 2006 after “discovering” he had not been insured for a year. As Lopez points out, it’s frightening to think that two uninsured drivers were “barreling around Los Angeles” in their Ford Expedition, “an SUV the size of Dodger Stadium.”
6. Michelle allegedly drove without insurance from June 2005 through February 2007. So, Rocky buys himself insurance and continues to let Michelle drive without. A pervasive “rules don’t apply to me” attitude is a superb clue to alcoholism, as is being so spaced out that you aren’t even aware you don’t have insurance.
7. The City Attorney, the top law enforcer in Los Angeles, either knowingly allowed his wife to drive his car while on a suspended license, or didn’t know her license had been suspended, either way an excellent clue to alcoholism or codependency.
8. During her license suspension, she was separately ticketed for disobeying a turn-only sign, a 35% probability of DUI according to research cited in Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence. Don’t think the officer would have detected a DUI– in another study cited in the same book, barely one in four drivers later proven to have been under the influence at the time of the infraction were arrested.
9. Rocky launched “Street Smart,” a driving-safety program for students that included “the importance of motor vehicle insurance,” in May 2006 when it’s likely both he and his wife were driving without insurance.
Heavy drinking or using would likely have long been uncovered if a celebrity had engaged in similar violations, questionable ethics and outright hypocrisy. But there’s more.
Michelle was reported to have an outstanding warrant for her arrest for failing to appear in court nearly nine years ago on charges of driving–get this–without insurance in an unregistered car while her license was suspended. And The Los Angeles Times also found evidence that the Delgadillos not only had a least five parking tickets in the last three years, but also were chronically late in paying the fines.
Still, it gets worse.
The Times interviewed seven former or current city employees who, on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said they saw the city attorney use staff for personal business. The city code is quite clear on such matters: “no city official…shall use his or her position, or the power of authority of his or her office or position, in any manner intended to induce or coerce any person to provide, directly or indirectly, anything of value which shall accrue to the private advantage, benefit, or economic gain, of the city official or employee, or of any other person.” It’s hard to believe the chief law enforcer for the City of Los Angeles would violate the city code he took an oath to enforce without benefit of alcoholic biochemistry in either him or his wife.
But the coup de grace for me as an Enrolled Agent tax professional and alcoholism researcher was the disclosure of Michelle’s failure to register and pay the city tax for her consulting business, along with the failure to file corporate income tax returns with the California Franchise Tax Board. Incredibly, Rocky’s office is responsible for prosecuting City tax scofflaws. The State suspended her corporate license in early 2005, presumably after non-payment of the state’s $800 minimum tax and for failing to file returns for several years. (She claims she paid income tax on the earnings on her personal return; let’s hope so.) However, one must wonder about the qualifications of this “stay at home” mom. She happens to be married to a city attorney, hadn’t worked since being an aide to a former City Councilman in the mid 1990s and suddenly she’s a “consultant” earning, according to conflict-of-interest reports filed with the city, somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 per year.
As The Times noted, Michelle Delgadillo seems to have disregarded a number of everyday rules and laws. When a law enforcer’s wife exhibits a “rules don’t apply to me” attitude in serial fashion and the law enforcer is complicit, we give the benefit of the doubt by assuming alcoholism or severe codependency. Rocky applied a different standard to his own family than for Hilton, who was being prosecuted by his office–and has repeatedly applied a different standard to his own family than to his community. When hypocrisy overwhelms we should look for evidence of addictive use. While public evidence of such use wouldn’t excuse the awful behaviors, they would serve to explain–and to help either or both get clean and sober. Only then will the misbehaviors stop. Until then, the behaviors, if there’s underlying alcoholism, will only get worse.