A local first grade teacher has been charged with felony grand theft for stealing wine.
The charges come after Contact 13 Chief Investigator Darcy Spears exposed how the teacher was caught on camera.
We're not just talking about a bottle of booze.
We're talking lots and lots of wine.
Cases worth thousands of dollars... Brazenly stolen by a woman who's supposed to be a role model for children.
Goolsby Elementary school teacher Heather Avner Ogle has another title--the "Blonde Bandit"--one she earned after being captured on surveillance cameras loading luggage carts full of wine and walking away with them from the World of Pinot Noir event in Santa Barbara.
On a school day in early March, hotel cameras photographed Ogle in a distinctive zigzagged black and white shirt at the Bacara Resort front desk.
Then, outside with at least one man loading the stolen cases of wine into a waiting truck.
"There were a bunch of other people looking around for their wine and that's when I heard that somebody had just walked off with cases," said World of Pinot Noir President Leslie Mead Renaud, who noticed five cases of her wine went missing--worth more than $2,000.
"The person who identified her to me knew her as having been suspected of taking wine in the past," Renaud said.
This time, Ogle got caught.
On June 3, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney's office filed a criminal complaint against Heather Ogle, charging her with a single felony count.
She won't be arrested, but must appear in a California court to answer the charge.
The Clark County School District tells Contact 13 they're aware of the charge and are closely monitoring the case. They have to wait for it to play out in court before deciding whether to take any action.
Heather Ogle is scheduled to be arraigned on July 6. If convicted, she faces as little as probation, or as much as three years in jail.
We called and texted Ogle for comment, but she did not respond.
