Minnesota
Winter event organizers adjusting to recent warmup
MINNEAPOLIS — The record challenging warmth and lack of natural snow is impacting several winter events scheduled this week.
The Minnesota Ice Festival at TCO Stadium in Eagan is laying down special tarp to preserve as much ice as possible.
“People like to touch the ice and actually experience it. And by putting these UV tarps over everything, it’s like an insurance package to ensure we can be open a couple more weeks after this,” said Robbie Harrell, Founder & CEO of Minnesota Ice.
The festival will be closed Thursday, but open again Friday with fireworks, and one of the largest ice sculpting competitions in the country.
“We’ve got ice sculptors coming in from all the way over in Europe and throughout the United States. We’ve got judges coming in from Canada. It’s really a big opportunity for the ice sculptors to showcase their art. We’re giving them 25 blocks of ice,” Harrell said.
Over in Theo Wirth Park, the warmth hasn’t stopped the cross-country skiers. But it has been a challenge for the Loppet Foundation, forcing them to change the route for this weekend’s races.
“The only races that will be affected are longer skis, they’ll now be five kilometer loops. But other than that, a lot of our events will continue as planned, because so much of it is based from the park originally,” said Meghan Cosgrove, the Loppet’s Executive Director.
She says the uncooperative weather is just something her team has to anticipate from the start. But she said the course is ready to go — snow or shine.
“Being rooted here in Wirth is special in and of itself, and now everyone can be at the events together, so there’s a bigger community feel to it, in a sense,” said Cosgrove.
Harrell said more than 30,000 guests have already visited the ice festival and they’ll plan to keep it open as long as the weather allows.
For any additional changes, or to buy tickets for the ice festival, visit their website.
The latest on the Loppet can be found here.
After a press conference earlier today in St. Paul, we continue the conversation on food support across the state. Zach Rodvold with Second Harvest Heartland joins us to talk about growing demand, including estimates that as many as 1 in 5 Minnesota families may be struggling to afford food, and what’s being done to help meet the need.
Minnesota
Minneapolis nonprofit founders push back on lawsuit alleging they misused $2M in charitable assets
A Minnesota couple is accused of misusing nonprofit assets to fund “lavish lifestyles,” according to a lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.
The lawsuit is filed against Larry and Sharon Cook and their nonprofits, Real Believers Faith Center and Les Jolies Petites School of Dance, based in north Minneapolis.
“[The Cooks] diverted more than $2 million in charitable assets from Les Jolies and Real Believers to fund lavish lifestyles, luxury travel, designer goods, and for-profit ventures masquerading under nearly identical names, while pretending to serve their communities,” the lawsuit reads.
Larry Cook is the senior pastor at Real Believers Faith Center and called the lawsuit a lie.
“It’s an absolute 1,000% fabrication of the facts,” Cook said on Tuesday. “It’s a fiction, and I’m glad we’re here to talk about it, because we do great work in the community.”
The Attorney General’s Office claims that over the course of about six years, more than $1.3 million in funds were misspent from Real Believers and approximately $800,000 from Les Jolies. The lawsuit says some of those funds were spent at Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, at a hotel in London and to pay the Cooks’ homeowners association for parking fines and late fees.
The lawsuit also accuses the couple of making false statements to the IRS and taking out loans that “served no charitable purpose.”
When the couple sat down with WCCO inside the church, they didn’t dispute the purchases and said they were all made for charitable purposes.
“I do get a salary for what I do at [Les Jolies], so they’re acting like we took everything that was for the nonprofit and spent it on ourselves, which is a total lie,” said Sharon Cook.
As for the travel, the couple said those are ministry trips with church parishioners and each person paid their own way.
“[The Attorney General’s Office is] gonna have to answer when we get to the courtroom, because documents and truth don’t lie,” said Larry Cook.
The couple got some media attention a few years ago when they bought a nearby crime-ridden gas station. The lawsuit says they used nonprofit funds to help cover the gas station bills, while the money made went into a for-profit bank account.
The lawsuit also accuses the Cooks of failing to register with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office as required by law, as well as violating the Minnesota Nonprofit Corporation Act.
The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said a temporary restraining order is in place to protect the nonprofit assets from being diverted.
A 19-year-old man is accused of driving a stolen car and crashing into a Minnesota State Patrol squad car in Minneapolis Friday evening, injuring three people, including a trooper.
Officials say the incident started around 10:30 p.m. in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. The criminal complaint says Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office deputies found a stolen red Hyundai and were following it when the driver of the car started to flee and drive recklessly.
The Hyundai entered Minneapolis and the deputies turned off their lights and stopped pursuing the car, the charges say. The car drove through Aldrich Avenue and 46th Street at approximately 80 mph, blowing through a stop sign before crashing into the side of a state patrol vehicle.
The 19-year-old, who was driving the Hyundai, fled on foot but was apprehended a short time later, the complaint says.
The trooper was hospitalized with a fractured right fibula and a fractured left scapula, court documents say. The two passengers in the Hyundai were also both taken to the hospital; one had a compound neck fracture and brain bleed, while the other had neck pain, the complaint says.
According to the charges, the teenager told police in a post-Miranda statement that it’s fun to drive around in stolen vehicles.
He faces three counts of criminal vehicular operation, one count of receiving stolen property and one count of fleeing a peace officer.
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