Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/tag/paul-collins/)
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect additional information provided Thursday morning by Paul Collins, chairman of the Tumbleweed board. Sheri Boelter, executive director of the Tumbleweed Runaway Program in Billings since 2011, has left the organization. (more…) Continue Reading →
A spokesperson for Glamour magazine has responded to a claim made by Sheri Boelter in a story about the Tumbleweed Runaway Program that we published Wednesday. Boelter, the director of the nonprofit agency, was featured by Glamour last November as one of “50 Phenomenal Women of the Year,” and she told Last Best News, in a tape-recorded interview, that she did not provide Glamour with the information used in her profile. “If you ask Glamour magazine where they got their information, they Googled it,” she said. Mistrella Murphy, a spokesperson for Glamour in New York, wrote to Last Best News on Friday and asked us to publish this statement:
“The information in question was provided by Boelter to our writer, and the magazine has an email transcript of the exchange.” In its profile of Boelter, Glamour printed an anecdotal account of a frigid evening in February 2014 when the drop-in center at Tumbleweed was supposedly crowded with homeless teens. Continue Reading →
The Billings Gazette has written a story on the troubles at the Tumbleweed Runaway Program, following up on the story I posted yesterday. Derek Brouwer, a reporter I have met only a couple of times, did a good job on it. In particular, he had the good idea of asking Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder about the very large encampment of teens that Tumbleweed Director Sheri Boelter supposedly visited during a Youth Count survey in 2013. Boelter’s claims about that camp, and the many discrepancies in her account, are at the heart of allegations of fraudulent activities raised by five current and former employees of the nonprofit agency. Here’s what Linder had to say:
Camps of that size have never been discovered by Yellowstone County Sheriff Mike Linder or his staff, Linder said Thursday. Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: This article contains two clarifications/updates in the body of the story. The board of directors of the Tumbleweed Runaway Program is investigating allegations that its executive director has inflated and in some cases fabricated statistics regarding the number of homeless young people in Billings. The board’s investigation into the activities of Sheri Boelter was sparked by allegations raised by one former employee, but similar concerns have been raised by other current and former employees. (more…) Continue Reading →
