1. I am not naïve enough to believe that teachers are necessarily more moral than …. dentists….. . I know life isn’t a Hallmark movie.
   However: surely sanctions should be taken against a teacher who is brazen enough to be a serial cheat and fraudster and makes no attempt to hide it from her students. She actually takes pride in her behaviour!
   She cannot really tell her charges
   “Don’t cheat on your exams because that is very bad and will bring shame to you and your family!”
   I hope her local education board read this article.

   • This act has nothing to do with her job, therefore, no sanctions are warranted. What’s next, work write ups for speeding?

     • try morals and criminal activity

   • Exactly! If I was her principal and I saw this id definitely call her out!

   • The only problem with this “teachers need to be more moral” theme is that teachers aren’t paid well enough for anyone to even remotely suggest that they need to be exemplary in their personal lives to retain their teaching credentials.

     You can say the same thing about a bunch of other professions that supposedly command and demand respect, like attorneys, cops, religious figures and especially politicians. Those assholes make a lot more money than teachers and yet no one complains when they lie, drink like fish in pubic places, and steal. Sometimes a fuss is made when a priest molests someone, but that’s about it.

     All of that said, Valerie here is a dirtbag. She should be publicly mocked. But let’s not pretend teachers are obligated to be especially upstanding. A lot of kids on this country go home to idiot parents every night who deny evolution and modern geology in favor of Bible nonsense — thankless work all around.

2. Wow. The word “brazen” comes to mind.

   Seems like she can afford a few pairs of $120+ ASICS, running gear, travel expenses to races, personalized hats…but balks when it comes to properly pay for a race entry.

   I wonder if the Justin Turner Foundation knows about this. It’s a bad look for one of their charity runners to have stolen hundreds of dollars from other races.

   • I looked up her IG account earlier (it’s private now) and saw that she ran the LA Marathon in 2018 under the Justin Turner Foundation. She put up a post that her friend joined her at the race at the last minute to run and turns out … same bib #’s.

3. I looked through her insta feed, and Derek’s only scratched the surface with this one. I found at least two more that I forwarded to Derek.

   • I had found some more. I didn’t post all of them, the article would be too long..but I think the point was made. Thanks for the email!

4. This is theft. She committed a crime. Had she admitted to stealing during the application process, she wouldn’t be hired. She should be fired now.

5. Good observation, Kevin, spot on.

   Re: the color pic of the three gals, with #4598 clearly visible, it appears that BOTH the other bibs could be same number. WTF!

6. Potential solution at least for bigger races would be to require the timing-tag to be scanned prior to entering the corral and security will get sent to that special security checkpoint if it doesn’t scan or is a mismatch, though I feel like entering a race will be like going through the tsa in the near future due to fraud and worse terrorists

   • Problem is the time that takes. At a small marathon that had one entry point for security reasons I would guess, the line was huge. They were only looking at bibs too. Add more entry points and RF readers and it starts getting expensive. And you know who will pay for that.

   • At Daytona Beach half, you didn’t get your medal until they cut the timer off of your shoe!

   • I’ve seen large races (Atlanta 10-miler last experience) that attempt ultra control by having just one or two entry points. It’s ludicrous especially when you have to enter behind a couple thousand just to get up to a front start wave. Minutes before the race two things happen: A tackle/shoving fest for many aggressively trying to move up to their wave, and others just hop over the fences into where they belong. I don’t advocate zero control, but some races need to use their heads about designing it.

   • In Tokyo, they take your photo when you pick up the bib. You’re also given a wrist-band with a bar code. On race day, at the checkpoints, they scan the bar code and verify that the photo linked to your bib is really you. And I’m sure they wouldn’t let more than one runner enter with the same bar code.
     And it all went pretty smoothly. For a 40k+ runner event I thought Tokyo really was a breeze to deal with; especially compared to New York.

7. We could have interesting debates about whether taking a medal is cheating when you pay for, but do not complete an entire race (some races even condone this). However, it is clear and blatant theft to repeatedly steal medals from races you do not pay for. This woman has no shame.

8. Damn what kind of friend let’s their other friend pay race entries then sidles up with a “yo lemme copy your bib so I don’t have to pay my entry” what a bunch of losers

   • Perhaps they split the cost?

     • This. An article Derek posted a year or two ago exposed a couple who belong to a sort of “bandit club,” where they get one legitimate bib, then make copies, presumably sharing the cost or returning the favor at other races.

9. Derek: just curious whether you attempted to contact her before posting this. Often you mention that fact, along with whether or not any of the people in question BQ’d.

   It’ll be interesting to see how she responds to getting busted.

10. I completed a half marathon organized by a local running club a couple years back. It wasn’t a large race, (under 1000) but they ran out of finisher medals. Even though they had over 100 extra.

    I found out after the fact that members of the running club were handing back their medals to make sure finishers got their medals.

    As the dead last male finisher, I was horrified to hear this. Gave it back to the race director, who didn’t even have one for all his efforts.

11. Sorry to hear that Mike. Unfortunately running clubs are often part of the problems. The article was shared within a club. A funny thing (not) is the members blamed her for the theft but they are totally ok when they openly organized bandit run at major races, and shared photos proudly at the Facebook. They think no-bib bandit is ok so long as no medal is given. It’s sad that those who love running, and organized club are supposed to care the running community.

12. Theft is only part of the problem. If she injured herself or worse during the race how the hell would the race organisers know who she is? Some next of kin who is unrelated to her would be told the person they know running the race has come to harm, and medical staff have no way of knowing if she may be allergic to anything.

    • Darwin might have a chance.

    • And that’s the real issue there Rachel. We all think that “hey, it won’t happen to me” but things do happen in races. What if she has a common drug allergy, or the flip side, what if the person whose number she stole does and the paramedics or doctors withhold that from her. But narcissistic people like this one would never see that or understand how her actions affects legitimately entered runners.

      • It shouldn’t be their problem. They should treat her like she represented herself. If her enabler claims no allergies and she has a bee sting allergy, they have no duty to treat her for the allergy.

13. This is theft.

14. Who cares, you can run for free

15. There are more serious issues going on around us, like poverty, human trafficking, etc. yet you’re all losing your little minds over a hot girl (probably why you’re so pissed) who might have copied a handful of bibs, but I found 50+ she was legitimately registered for. YEAH I CAN LURK TOO, you forgot to mention those!

    I wish this bandit would steal my heart!

    • Thanks for chiming in, Val.

      • (Who’s ‘Val’?)

        • Sorry–I was making a joke that the poster named “Jen” was actual Valerie, the one this article describes….

          • I got it. Need a “like” button.

    • Lol, Matt. Exactly

    • The inevitable defending post with the cheek to describe herself as hot.

    • She did legitimately run the 2018 LA Marathon, but she copied that bib for her friend.

      She does not get bonus points for not stealing on occasion.

16. Have you contacted her to find out her ‘reasons’? I’d love to hear them.

17. Rock n Roll series and those types of races are such a sh*tshow anyway and they do very little to make sure these races are run correctly. Perhaps on a teacher’s salary it’s hard to afford race entry fees?

    • Then run less races. It is not that hard not to defraud races. So because she teaches, she can simply bypass entry fees? As others note as well, she is traveling to all these races. So it seems like this argument doesn’t hold water.

18. Some of these races are getting carried away with their prices.

19. She is a loser and immoral and she knows it.

20. Why is it that cheaters are so damn dramatic? “Pushing myself to the limit”, “Running with the flu” and “endless hills -(The entire Pasadena marathon is in a 250 ft elevation range and the longest hill seems to be about 150 feet over 1 1/2 miles)” geez its a half marathon that you jogged. Give me a break.

    • That’s what I contend. They always overcome insumountable odds to glory.

21. The fact that a race is shitty or expensive is not a pertinent issue. Theft is theft.
    If a store owner is a jerk who overcharges people is it ok for me to steal things from his store? Would you answer the same if you were that store owner?
    If I usually pay my dinner tab is it okay to dine and dash just a few times a year? Would it still be ok if you owned the restaurant? Or if you were a server there who got stiffed when I dashed?
    Does caring about this issue (people stealing race entries) really prevent me from caring about other, possibly larger, issues? Last I checked I can care about more than one thing at the same time.

    • Beautifully stated. This addresses all of the issues here.

22. Cant understand why a big deal. The Woman looks to be uniquely attractive. Wonder if its becuse she not a particular cultural group. Me suspects the green eyed monster? If people could just accept success in every class of people. Too bad.

    • You have any basis for these accusations? Derek has exposed men, women, ugly ones, handsome ones, young, old, from different countries. I fail to see a pattern.

    • Even if this were true (hint, some people are not seeing what you apparently do) – how does it excuse the behaviour?

    • You can’t understand why a pattern of theft is a big deal?

23. Derek, did you take down some photos? I have accessed the page through multiple devices and browsers but I can’t see them. What happened?

    • Yes. Only relating to the bib forger stories. I will write about that situation next week. I do hope to have those pictures back up by the end of next week.

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