The Downfall of a Non-Profit: The Ongoing Saga of the Save A Life Foundation

Founded in 1993 by Carol Spizzirri, the Save A Life Foundation’s (SALF) charter was to provide first aid training classes to the masses. Spizzirri claimed her motivation was a Labor Day 1992 hit and run car crash in which her 18-year-old daughter, Christina Jean Pratt, bled to death because first responders were not properly trained.

Spizzirri, who claimed to be a registered nurse, was immediately lionized by Illinois media and soon politicians began pushing financial support for her Schiller Park nonprofit. SALF supportersreportedly included former Chicago Schools boss Arne Duncan (now U.S. Secretary of Education), U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and a host of Illinois state officials.

In 2003, Illinois Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie)sponsored a resolution praising Spizzirri and declaring “Save A Life Week in honor of the foundation’s ten year anniversary.”

Receiving millions in grants from the Illinois Department of Public Health, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other government agencies, Spizzirri claimed her organization provided first aid training for “2 million children, many of them from the Chicago Public Schools.”

A report released just this week (on July 15, 2015) by WSB-TV 2 Atlanta included information that the CDC administered more than $3 million in grant money to SALF. Several Freedom of Information Act requests from investigative reporter Jodie Fleischer on how the money was spent have not been responded to by the CDC. A high-ranking CDC official was also reported as being the treasurer of the executive board and closely connected to SALF.

SALF was first exposed in a November 2006 expose by ABC7 Chicago investigative reporter Chuck Goudie. Among other revelations, Spizzirri had falsely claimed to be an RN based on a non-existent college degree.

As for her claims about her daughter bleeding to death as the result of a hit and run, per Goudie’s story, “(Even) that isn’t true, according to police and hospital reports and an inquest by the Lake County coroner. The official record states that 18-year-old Christina Spizzirri was legally drunk at the time of the accident; and that after hosting a drinking party while her mother was vacationing in Florida, the teenager got behind the wheel and flipped her own car.”

And Arne Duncan – who appeared as a cartoon character on SALF’s website hyping the nonprofit – raised doubts how many Chicago students were trained.

In an on-camera interview, when confronted with her claims by Goudie, Spizzirri tore off her mic and stormed out of the room.

Watch here.

Four years later, the San Diego Reader revealed that Spizzirri had been “convicted twice for shoplifting” and just months before she died in the car crash, Christina filed for an order of protection against her mother, alleging that her Spizzirri had struck her “on several occasions and threatened her on many occasions” and that she feared “her mother will attempt to harass her or retaliate.”

After a dozen more critical media stories, SALF folded in September 2009. Although defunct, SALF reportedly is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Illinois Attorney General’s Charitable Trust Bureau.

And Carol Spizzirri, who used to rub elbows with political big shots and was twice an invited guest at the White House, now lives in a mobile home park in Southern California.

Enter Peter Heimlich, a businessman and musician in suburban Atlanta who does original reporting on his blog The Sidebar. His last name should be familiar. His father, Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, developed the famous choking rescue method, the “Heimlich maneuver.”

In 2002, Peter and his wife Karen Shulman began researching Dr. Heimlich’s career. According to Peter’s website, “(To) our astonishment, we inadvertently uncovered a wide-ranging, unseen 50-year history of fraud.”

Since Spring 2003 their research has resulted inscores of mainstream media reports in the U.S. and abroad, including the New York Times, ABC 20/20, The Hollywood Reporter, and many other print and broadcast news outlets.

Patch recently caught up with the younger Heimlich to discuss what he calls “the SALF scandal.” He says he’s been researching the nonprofit for about a decade and has accumulated thousands of documents tracking SALF’s rise and fall.

Patch (P): How did you first learn about the Save a Life Foundation?

Peter Heimlich (PH): I became aware of SALF about a decade ago while researching my father’s unusual career. He was supposedly the group’s “medical adviser.” As I came to learn, Carol Spizzirri and my dad, who was then in his eighties, also had a cozy personal relationship.

The medical profession has long considered my father to be a scammer, so it didn’t make sense why any legitimate organization would associate with him. As it turned out, SALF was far from legitimate.

It may not be the biggest dollar fraud in Illinois history, but it’s one of the most obvious, outrageous, and wide-ranging, pulling in public officials at every level of the political food chain. If I taught political science, I’d use it as a textbook example of corruption, incompetence, and cover-up.

P: Can you describe the inconsistencies and misinformation that was apparent in SALF’s rise?

PH: Here’s one of the biggest problems. In funding applications that pulled in millions of dollars, SALF claimed their trainers provided in-school first aid classes to hundreds of thousands of students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). A program of that scope would have produced tens of thousands of pages of documents. But in response to a federal court subpoena and FOIA requests, CPS failed to produce a single training record: no correspondence, no scheduling, no employee records, no evaluations, just a handful of SALF press releases hyping their relationship with then-Chicago Public Schools head Arne Duncan.

SALF’s training was supposed to be free to the schools, so why did Duncan personally arrange a $174,000 contract with Spizzirri to train thousands of students? Further, CPS wrote me that they have no records for the program except the contract and paid invoices to SALF, and that Duncan was entirely responsible. But when I and others have tried to get answers from Duncan – who was close to SALF for years and reportedly called Spizzirri “one of my heroes” – he won’t answer. Why not?

In 2011, CPS Inspector General James Sullivan wrote me that there’s no statute of limitations on vendor fraud, so I submitted a thoroughly-documented investigation request asking him to look into what happened to the money CPS paid SALF including the contact Duncan arranged with Spizzirri. Despite multiple follow-ups, I’ve never received a reply, so presumably Sullivan wants to bury the mess.

P: What was the turning point in the change of fortunes for SALF – leading to their closing in 2009?

PH: I don’t think SALF ever recovered after Chuck Goudie’s 2006-07 ABC7 exposes. But the last straw was a September 11, 2009 letter to Spizzirri from the Federal Emergency Management Agencyterminating her organization as a FEMA affiliate. A week later, Spizzirri dissolved SALF.

P: How does Annabel Melongo fit into the SALF saga and would you consider her a sympathetic figure?

PH: On October 31, 2006, Spizzirri swore out felony charges against Annabel Melongo, a former SALF employee who left the company months earlier. Based on Spizzirri’s word and little else, Schiller Park cops arrested Melongo on dubious charges that she destroyed SALF’s computers. That triggered eight years of relentless, baseless, and ultimately unsuccessful prosecutions of Melongo by the Illinois criminal justice system. In a wide-ranging federal civil rights lawsuit, Melongo is now suing Spizzirri and others responsible for the abuse she endured.

(In the WSB-TV report, which aired after the Patch email interview with Heimlich, Melongo summed up SALF as an organization “”getting money from state and federal agencies and pretending to use them for public school, training children.”)

P: How did you obtain a document with Spizzirri’s contact information after she relocated to California? In the document, what was she filing for?

PH: In September, Spizzirri participated in a CERT training course offered by the San Marcos Fire Department and Palomar College. I obtained a copy of her application via a public records request.

P: What was the inconsistency regarding David Hasselhoff serving as SALF’s celebrity spokesperson? When did he say he was, and when did he deny it?

PH: From 1993 to at least 2000, in grant applications, fundraising materials, and media reports, SALF claimed that actor David Hasselhoff was their “Honorary Chairman” and that he actively supported the group’s mission. Via his publicist, I asked Hasselhoff if it was true and he unequivocally denied any association with SALF.

By sheer coincidence, a few weeks later I obtained letters he’d signed on Baywatch stationary that confirmed SALF’s claims. I then asked The Hoff why he lied to me, but never received a reply.

Right after I blogged that story, on her Facebook, Carol Spizzirri posted a photo of her, Hasselhoff, and youngest daughter, Ciprina, on the Baywatch set.

When she grew up, Ciprina worked as SALF’s Director of Communications for about seven years [according to her LinkedIn] so presumably she could shed some light on what was going on at her mother’s organization. She lives in L.A. with her husband, a top special effects artist in the film industry.

(Here’s a video clip of Hasselhoff recording a PSA for SALF).

David Hasselhoff PSA for the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF), December 1993 from Peter M. Heimlich on Vimeo.

P: Have you confirmed an open attorney general investigation against the Save-A-Life Foundation?

PH: In a March 9, 2015 letter to me, the Illinois Attorney General’s office confirmed that their investigation is ongoing, so presumably that’s still the case.

P: What politicians, local or national, have been linked the SALF and which ones seem to have had the closest connection?

PH: Records prove that Sen. Dick Durbin, Arne Duncan, Congressman John Shimkus, and IL State Sen. Donne Trotter steered millions of tax dollars to SALF. They should be demanding investigations, but they won’t even answer questions. Why not?

(IL Sen.) Lou Lang may have documents and information that could assist Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s investigation. Has he ever contacted her office offering to help? What about his state proclamation lavishing praise on Carol Spizzirri and her organization. Does he stand by that? If not, does he intend to make an effort to correct the Senate record?

(Inquiries inviting Lang to be interviewed for this article went unanswered.)

When they were running the Chicago Public Schools, Paul Vallas and Gery Chico signed a resolution falsely claiming SALF was training tens of thousands of students. According to a SALF press release, Sunny Chico said, “My husband Gery was instrumental in bringing SALF to the Chicago Public Schools.”

For years Vallas hyped SALF including recording a PSA in which he claimed “SALF trained over 400,000 Illinois children and adults.” I’d be surprised if SALF trained even 4,000 people in Illinois.

There’s no indication Chico or Vallas have ever lifted a finger to shed light on the SALF scam. Why not?

To my knowledge, there are only two elected officials who’ve taken action to find out what happened to the millions of tax dollars awarded to SALF. Since 2011, IL State Sen. Tim Bivins has been tirelessly demanding answers. And my congressman Rob Woodall (GA-7th District) has sent inquiries on my behalf to federal agencies that awarded millions to SALF, but which are now unwilling to answer questions about what happened to the money.

For example, top officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including director Dr. Tom Friedan, know all about the scam and have been trying to sweep it under the rug.

Why? According to The Hill, the agency not only awarded SALF $3.3 million, “CDC Deputy Director Douglas Browne...served as the nonprofit’s corporate treasurer from 2004 to 2009.”

Since Browne was the group’s money man, presumably he can shed some light on what happened to the CDC millions and other tax dollars awarded to SALF.

Heimlich added:

“Gordon T. Pratt of Milwaukee was Carol Spizziirri’s first husband. They parented three daughters (including Christina) and Pratt divorced her in 1981. When she founded SALF in 1993 using the bogus story about Christina’s death, Gordy dedicated himself to bringing to facts to light by writing letters to officials and sharing documents with reporters, such as his ex-wife’s shoplifting convictions.

After making small fortunes as a businessman and investor, he became an artist, self-publishing a remarkable graphic arts book about Christina and his ex-wife. He even went so far as to tattoo his entire upper body with the story of his daughter’s tragic life and death. My wife and I first connected with Gordy in 2007, we became fast friends, and I helped him land a three-page story and photo spread in Skin & Ink, an upmarket tattoo arts magazine.”

After a prolonged illness, Gordy died on April 6, 2015.

Update: On July 10, 2015 Spizzirri filed a request to the United States District Court for the Northern District Eastern Division that she be granted until August 3 to file her responsive pleading in the Melongo complaint, in which she has been listed as a defendant.

7/10/15 motion for extension on behalf of Carol Spizzirri by attorney Donald Angelini Jr. by Peter M. Heimlich

Top Photo: Screenshot of a SALF press release from 2003 , when Lou Lang was presented an award by the organization.