SHOCKING: AMERICAN RED CROSS PUTS MILLIONS AT RISK WITHOUT PROTECTIONS AGAINST LIFESAVING CERTIFICATIONS
PHOTO: Doug Forbes
UPDATE 07.16.23
The Washington Post worked with Meow Meow Foundation President Doug Forbes for nearly two months to expand upon Forbes’ 3+ year investigation into the American Red Cross and Summerkids camp where Roxie Forbes drowned under dubious circumstances. According to the WaPost article published today which confirmed Forbes’ assertions:
The Red Cross knew for years about its deeply flawed $150 million certification program division, including lifeguarding, water safety and CPR
The Red Cross redesigned its certification program division to decrease protections and increase revenue by roughly 450%, at the risk of endangering lives
The Red Cross has seen considerable fraudulent activity
The Red Cross willingly chose to ignore or accommodate incidents of fraud
Summerkids camp attorney Margaret Holm said to the WaPost that no one from Summerkids ever suggested reducing the length of the training and her client did not know what length of time the Red Cross recommended for lifeguard training. Holm misled the American public. According to documents associated with the legal Complaint, Holm’s camp owner client Cara DiMassa had direct discussions with the Red Cross prior to Roxie’s death about the length of training and worked with the Red Cross to abbreviate the training to at least a third of what was required.
LOS ANGELES — The Director of Quality Assurance for the American Red Cross said he left his position without severance pay because the organization’s refusal to change internal certification oversight practices contributed to death and public endangerment.
John McCallum said he not only walked away from the global humanitarian organization after 11 years but also denied a severance package in exchange for the opportunity to expose egregious practices.
“At the time of six year-old Roxie Forbes’ death at Summerkids camp, the ARC was fully aware of deficiencies in certification programs and chose not to do anything about them,” he said. Roxie drowned in the Altadena day camp’s small swimming pool during the morning of June 2019.
As early as 2016, McCallum said he warned top executives that it was far too easy for instructors in aquatics, safety and and other disciplines to dole out fraudulent certifications. The ARC is the nation’s leading provider of training services in lifeguarding, swim instruction, CPR/AED/FIrst Aid, aquatics management and more. Certification programming annually yields roughly $150 million for the global humanitarian brand.
According to McCallum’s affidavit, Summerkids camp — which was an ARC Licensed Training Provider — and its ARC lifeguard instructor Andrew Cervantes conspired to “violate the ARC’s lifeguard training standards.” However, McCallum also clearly holds the ARC itself accountable for its role in enabling the camp and Cervantes.
“The general public, which has placed an enormous amount of trust in the ARC for more than one hundred years, should know of the ARC's behavior in this matter. Every such ARC certification comes by way of an honor system. Meaningful oversight and accountability are virtually null and void.”
The worst of tragedies can happen when the nation’s leading aquatics certification provider uses nothing more than an honor system to certify persons as young as 15 in jobs with life and death consequences, as was the case with Roxie.
The DiMassa family has owned and operated Summerkids camp for more than three decades. According to records, the DiMassas contracted Cervantes as a lifeguard instructor since 2011. The DiMassas informed camp families that the vast majority of counselors were certified ARC lifeguards. After Roxie drowned, they reiterated the claim that all four counselors at the pool were ARC-certified.
Roxie’s father and Meow Meow Foundation President Doug Forbes — who also engages periodic investigative reporting — uncovered documents from which he alleged that Cervantes fraudulently certified himself as a lifeguard and instructor. Forbes also alleged that Cervantes never provided requisite 27-hour training or any written or skills testing for upwards of 100 Summerkids counselors that he certified as lifeguards over the years.
According to depositions and documents, Cervantes and counselors have since corroborated Forbes’ allegations. Summerkids Director-Owner Cara DiMassa apparently perpetuated the scheme, perennially encouraging Cervantes to abbreviate critical training.
In August of 2020, Forbes sent a demand letter to ARC General Counsel in which he demanded that Cervantes, the DiMassas and the Summerkids counselors be permanently precluded from ARC training privileges. Forbes also demanded that the ARC work with Meow Meow Foundation to correct lethal oversight gaps.
ARC Counsel turned to McCallum for an internal investigation. By September, McCallum permanently banned Cervantes, permanently banned Summerkids from being a Licensed Training Provider and revoked current lifeguard and water safety certifications from the camp’s counselors.
However, ARC counsel said they took exception with Forbes’s suggestion that “the Red Cross played a role in this tragedy.” At no time did these attorneys disclose to Forbes that McCallum had, for years, alerted legal, training and other top executives about internal deficiencies which could cause grave harm.
The ARC refused to hold itself accountable or work with Forbes on correcting the issues which were eerily similar to those that its own Director of Quality Assurance presaged.
Forbes said, “Exactly like McCallum, I offered the ARC numerous opportunities to do what was right, not what was convenient and potentially lethal, but they continued to prioritize revenues over vital protection, especially for children.”
Forbes said that a teen YMCA camp counselor drowned — also under nefarious circumstances — 15 minutes from his house a year after Roxie died. The YMCA has largely adopted Red Cross lifeguard training.
“I walk around stunned most of the time now, knowing that a $3.8 billion organization like the Red Cross is virtually eager to risk lives like my child’s. They unapologetically deceive the entire American public. I never thought my depression could get worse.”
McCallum shared similar sentiments. After he heard about Roxie’s death, he said he remembered “tears streaming down my face.” He said he faced countless other cases when ARC instructors gamed the system, many of which potentially portended dark consequences.
“Ignoring my ongoing requests to correct these systems and practices could lead to dire outcomes, deceive the very public that, in countless matters, entrusts the ARC with its lives [in fact, I often mentioned to said upper management how it was "bad optics" to not embrace critical change] and enable lifeguard instructors to game the system by issuing invalid certifications, not only for themselves, but for others. I now know this is the case that ended in the death of [Roxie].”
Forbes shared nearly four years of documents, interviews and research with the Washington Post to support its own thorough investigation.