Workers at 2005 rally say they weren't paid
County proves to be no 'hog' heaven
By Gail Binkly
The cancellation of Rally in the Rockies left many bikers angry and upset that they had journeyed clear to Montezuma County only to find that the five-day fiesta of biker rodeos, concerts, lingerie contests and pineapple-pit female wrestling had been shut down.
One Farmington woman, however, was cheering the rally’s demise.
“I don’t feel sorry for Dan [Bradshaw, the rally director] at all,” said Lori Cathey. “The full truth is, what goes around, comes around.”
Cathey worked at the Rally in the Rockies in 2005, when it took place at the Sky Ute Events Center in Ignacio. She and four other people who worked in the rally’s money room were never paid, she said.
Cathey said she and the other workers had filled out time cards and they were sitting on a table as the payroll was being done, but they disappeared. They filled out new ones but still were not paid.
She worked 31 1/2 hours at $10 an hour, she said, so she is owed $315. The other people were owed varying amounts, with the total probably under $4,000, she said.
To make matters worse, she spent about $80 in gas driving from Farmington to Ignacio every day to the rally.
Working conditions weren’t good, Cathey said. Among the workers’ tasks was counting beer tokens that people had used to buy beers. They had been thrown into a container and when the workers took them out, they smelled of urine.
“People had peed in the container,” Cathey said. “We had to put gloves on to count the tokens.”
She said they told Bradshaw about the problem and said their gloves were turning yellow, but he didn’t want to listen.
“We worked hard,” she said. “It’s kind of unfair that he didn’t pay anybody in the money room. We were exposed to bad things.”
In addition, Bradshaw claimed that someone in the money room had embezzled a large sum — varying from $100,000 to $200,000, she said. He went to the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office with his suspicions, but no charges were ever filed.
Pat Downs, an investigator with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, told the Free Press that, after an investigation, nothing had come of the accusations of embezzlement. He said he had left messages for rally personnel months ago but got no reply.
“The case was basically closed,” he said. “The records he was providing were not sufficient to determine if theft had really occurred. We didn’t have any evidence to point in any specific direction.”
Bradshaw could not be reached for comment.
Cathey, who is on disability because of emphysema and other health problems, said it was ridiculous to accuse her and her co-workers of embezzlement.
“They can look at my bank accounts and dig up my back yard if they want,” she said. “Dan put us through so much turmoil for three or four months. When you’re being accused of stealing $150,000 that’s a lot of stress on you.”
Debby Forsythe, who also worked in the rally money room in 2005, agreed with Cathey. She said she worked 19 hours and her husband worked 17 hours, and neither of them was paid.
The other couple that reportedly was not paid declined to comment.
“He [Bradshaw] told me the time cards were sitting right there, but when it came time to pay us, they had mysteriously disappeared,” Forsythe said. “I took him new time cards and handed them directly to him. I said, ‘When can we expect our money?’ He said, ‘Within a week’. That was nine months ago.”
The five workers filed for lost wages in New Mexico, because that was where they had been hired, but Bradshaw couldn’t be found when it came time to serve the subpoena, and the case was closed on Jan. 24, 2006.
Ironically, Cathey said, one of the other men involved with the rally spoke to her on the phone this year and asked her if she’d like to work in the money room again. “I told him, ‘Not just no, but hell, no’.
“No more motorcycle rallies for me. That was the first and the last.”
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