The item in the Greenwood Village police blotter was funny enough to be from The Onion if hundreds of Country Dinner Playhouse employees — and potentially thousands of former customers — had not been exposed to potential identity theft.
Greenwood Village police were on a routine patrol of the theater company’s property on Nov. 23 when officers noticed “60 to 70” boxes stacked near a Dumpster. One of the officers noticed a box marked “payroll” with several manila envelopes inside.
“The files contained names, addresses and Social Security numbers of former employees of the theater,” the police report reads. “The officer also found another box with credit-card numbers and receipts in it. The officers spoke with some workers cleaning out the property, who removed the sensitive documents from the pile and placed them in a (locked) shed. The supervisor told the officers he would dispose of the sensitive documents in a secure manner.”
As if the sad saga of the playhouse’s dunderheaded demise in May couldn’t get any sadder. Now, disgusted former employees want to know how long the records were out there — and are any missing?
Said former producer David Pritchard: “This is outrageous — all our info left out by the Dumpster for anyone to take.”
The principal players here: Uhlmann Offices of California owns the land, which it is renting to Dan Wiley. He’s using it for a “Winter World” theme park through Feb. 1. David Lovinggood and Bob Buffington still own the idle playhouse business itself, while Sam Newton owns any physical assets that remain on the property.
As owners of the business, the onus was on Lovinggood and Buffington to properly destroy records. “Obviously, the fault here lies with (Lovinggood) for not removing any sensitive or personal information,” said Uhlmann spokeswoman Janelle Sahaf. Instead, he left them in the attic.
The police report says Wiley hired a crew of laborers to clean the place up, and his workers ill-advisedly (but not illegally) dumped the boxes.
Greenwood Village police officer Steve Hile says the dumping wasn’t a crime. “It’s called (a lack of) common courtesy and respect for other people’s property.”
Wiley was out of the country last week, and the forwarding number he left was not accepting messages, but Wiley said in a press release that more than 2,000 attended Winter World in its first two weeks.
Lovinggood has not returned calls since the Playhouse closed in May.
The boxes still have not been destroyed, but Hile said they were moved into a locked shed. That’s not good enough for actor Randy St. Pierre. “We all know how easy it would be to break into those sheds, and all the info could be in the hands of crooks,” he wrote in a group e-mail.
Actor Judi Hofmeister is frustrated because she said a group of employees offered to help clean the barn out properly after the theater suddenly shuttered in May, and to make sure irreplaceable archival items were preserved. She got no response from ownership.
The irony? “I bet Lovinggood and Buffington’s social-security numbers are in there too,” she said. “Now wouldn’t that be a kicker, if identity-theft criminals got hold of their private info? Can we say ‘karma?’ ”
Forget karma. Can we say “paper shredder?”
“I can tell you the theater owned a paper shredder — and I am sure it was working overload the last week of the business,” said former producer Paul Dwyer, who’s trying to start a new dinner theater in the southeast metro area.
Then again, everyone knows the playhouse’s shed leaks so much water, Mother Nature may take care of destroying those files herself.
Any bets on whether former playhouse employees receive their year-end income-tax and 401(k) statements in a timely manner? Didn’t think so.
Briefly …
Congratulations to Geoff Kent, who was just elected president of the Society of American Fight Directors. It’s the largest organization of stage combatants in the world, and he’s its youngest president ever. “Where are my launch codes?” asks Kent, also a finalist for the Denver Post’s 2007 theater person of the year award (results will be announced Dec. 30) …
The Denver Center’s remarkable “The Diary of Anne Frank” closed Saturday, and if you missed it, you weren’t alone. The show was sold out for its final three weeks. The company took the extraordinary step of moving most performances to matinees to accommodate school groups. But the waiting list already had surpassed 3,000 when there were still two weeks to go in the run.
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
This week’s openings
Dec. 19-30. Lake Dillon’s “A Christmas Survival Guide.”Dillon
Dec. 20-24. Backstage’s “A Backstage 1950s Holiday Revue.” Breckenridge
This week’s closings
Today. Germinal Stage Denver’s “More Stately Mansions.”
Today. Lake Dillon’s “Miss Witherspoon.”
Today. Longmont Theatre Company’s “The Long Christmas Dinner” and “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.”
Today. Castle Rock Players’ “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” (at Douglas County Fairgrounds).
Sat. Nonesuch’s “Plaid Tidings,” Fort Collins.
Sat. Bovine Metropolis’ “I Know What You Did Last Christmas.”
Dec. 23. Victorian Playhouse’s “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol.”
Dec. 23. Miners Alley Playhouse’s “A Tuna Christmas,”Golden.
Dec. 23. El Centro Su Teatro’s “Á Colorado en una Noche de Navidad,” (at the King Center).
Dec. 23. 3-G Entertainment’s “Hattie What I Need You To Know!” (at Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theatre).
Dec. 23. Arvada Center’s “La Cage aux Folles” (main stage) and “Plaid Tidings” (Black Box Theater).
Dec. 23. Aurora Fox’s David and Julie Payne’s “A Christmas Carol.”
Dec. 23. Fine Arts Center Theatre Company’s “A Christmas Carol,” Colorado Springs.
Dec. 23. TheatreWorks’ “The SantaLand Diaries,” with Kelly Walters, Colorado Springs.
This week’s podcast
Jamie Horton: John Moore talks with the former Denver Center Theatre Company actor, who’s reading “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” for Stories on Stage at 2 and 7 p.m. today (Dec. 16) at the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Listen by .
