Pike Place Market's master gets 2 years for stealing, despite leniency pleas

Ignoring pleas for leniency, a King County judge yesterday sentenced longtime Pike Place Market master Millie Padua to two years in prison for stealing as much as $171,000 between 1996 and 1998 as she collected day-stall rental fees.

Padua, 74, was ushered quickly from the courtroom by relatives after the sentencing and was described by her attorney, Michael Schwartz, as distraught.

Superior Court Judge Donald Haley was petitioned by 196 Market vendors and craftspeople to give Padua a sentence that might be converted to community service or home detention.

One of the jurors who found Padua guilty during her three-week trial in February also wrote to the judge to request leniency, saying she had had a hard time convicting the defendant at trial.

But the judge suggested that a light sentence, even for someone of Padua's age, would be a slap on the wrist.

"It is clear to the court that over a three-year period, the defendant stole considerably more than $15,000," Haley said, referring to the minimum amount which constitutes felony theft. And he said it was not her supporters, the Market vendors, who were the victims of the crime, but the Public Development Authority, which runs the Market.

After the hearing, one of Padua's supporters, Market craftsman Gary Goedecke, angrily denounced the sentence and said an 11th-hour change in the sentencing recommendation by the state Department of Corrections smacked of politics.

A Corrections Department caseworker recommended in a presentencing report written April 22 that Padua receive the middle of the standard range for first-degree theft, 45 days in jail.

But at the sentencing yesterday, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Scott Peterson introduced an amended Corrections Department report that recommended three years in prison.

A faxed copy of the report from the department to the prosecutor's office was dated yesterday and stamped 10:47, 13 minutes before the sentencing hearing was to begin.

Peterson told the court that the caseworker hadn't been aware of the large amount of money involved or that the crime occurred over a period of years.

But the original Corrections Department report describes in detail Padua's pattern of hiding receipts and erasing records of day-stall vendors over three years. It states that the total value of the unrecorded receipts was $171,492.50.

Padua appeared nervous, frequently sticking her hands in the pockets of her slacks and withdrawing them, as she stood before the judge and attorneys argued her fate. She had maintained her innocence and continued to work at the Market as a cashier in a card shop.

But the judge said Padua's refusal to acknowledge responsibility showed a lack of remorse.

And he agreed with the prosecutor that an exceptional sentence was appropriate, regardless of the last-minute change, because Padua violated her position of trust at the Market, the thefts occurred repeatedly over several years, and he said the scheme to hide daily receipts by tucking them behind the receipts of the previous day was a sophisticated one.