One of the messiest stories in the community spilled into public view this week, dismissal of well-known summer camp coach Adan Pulido by Dan Hernandez, the city’s respected parks and recreation director.
Dozens of parents from the coach’s C3 Sunshine summer camp at Lindberg Park flooded Council Chambers for last Monday’s City Council meeting.
They were seeking a hearing/a measure of relief/and, eventually, reinstatement of Mr. Pulido. None of that materialized.
During the Council meeting, a suggested huddle outside of City Hall, in the Dale Jones Courtyard area, between Mr. Nachbar on one side and the Pulido parent-supporters and Mr. Pulido on the other, not only was meaningless but unpleasant, according to partisans.
One day later, Mr. Hernandez and City Manager John Nachbar told the newspaper that they could not openly speak of Mr. Pulido’s plight because of potential litigation.
The 36-year-old Mr. Pulido said the assertion about a lawsuit is not true, was not true, and that both Messrs. Nachbar and Hernandez have known that from the beginning of this unattractive scenario a month ago.
One central player in this dispute is a longtime parks and rec employee who holds a lofty position in the parks and recreation department. She was described as sounding like an experienced purveyor of profanity.
Mr. Pulido said that on a recent afternoon immediately preceding his firing, the woman unfurled and aimed at him a strand of profane terms beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet.
“My character is being attacked,” the man widely known as Coach Pulido said. “All I want is an apology from her.”
He said Mr. Hernandez told him at the time of his dismissal that the angry woman had apologized – just not to the gentleman she witheringly criticized.
(To be continued)
