Former Golf Pro Gets Second Chance After Arrest

Valentine’s Day 2011 was not romantic for Christopher Michael Stager, the onetime golf pro and pro shop manager at in Forks Township.

Instead of a valentine, Stager got an arrest warrant charging him with stealing $3,000 in golf clubs and $1,030 in summer league fees, as well as arranging to have Riverview pay the $100 printing costs for postcards promoting his girlfriend’s photography business.

Valentine’s Day 2012, no doubt, will be sweeter for Stager. He’s not in jail, and he has the opportunity for redemption.

The 33-year-old has another job, according to his attorney, mainly to support his toddler-age son. And Stager has been accepted into the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program for first-time, non-violent offenders.

Bottom line: With ARD, he has a chance to have his criminal record expunged.

”He has a lot of incentive to stay out of trouble,” said his attorney, Jair Ryan Novajosky of the Scranton-area community of Peckville.

The Northampton County district attorney’s office usually doesn’t allow cases involving employer-employee relations into the ARD program, according to Michael McGinley, the assistant district attorney handling Stager’s case.

But McGinley said an exception was made for Stager, in part because he made full restitution before applying for ARD. District Attorney John Morganelli, who decides on all ARD applications, approved Stager for the program, McGinley said.

Restitution included the $1,030 in summer league fees that the charges say he stole. He also returned the $3,000 in golf clubs he was charged with taking from the pro shop.

Stager’s case reached police’s radar screen, according to the records, on July 13, 2010, when Forks Det. James F. Rowden was contacted by William Hissam of , owner of Riverview.

Hissam said the company had suspected for several months that Stager was taking merchandise from the pro shop without paying for it. He said the suspicions were based on employees who said they had seen Stager taking clothing off display shelves, putting it on and wearing it out of the shop.

On July 21 – about three weeks after Stager was fired and Riverview found an $8,106 shortage in inventory – Rowden left Stager a phone message, telling him he was investigating a “substantial shortage” of inventory. Stager called back and left a message about setting up a meeting time.

In fact, according to court records, he returned three sets of golf clubs and a driver on July 24, 2010, telling a pro shop employee he wanted to place the clubs back into inventory “so that all his [Stager’s] troubles would go away.”

The formal charges against Stager were receiving stolen property, theft by deception and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds. The records say nothing about the difference between the inventory shortage and the $3,000 in clubs Stager was accused of taking.

As for the postcards, Hissam discovered that among other purchases Stager approved was a $100 invoice from a Stroudsburg printing company that sought payment from Riverview for printing 250 postcards promoting the photography business of Brooke McNamara – Stager’s girlfriend.

A Strausser family member told Rowden that Stager and McNamara distributed the cards at a golf tournament “allegedly” sponsored by McNamara, the records say. Rowden obtained e-mail exchanges between Stager and the printer. Stager asked that the “description of work performed” on the invoice be changed from “Brooke McNamara Post Cards” to “Riverview Promo Cards.”

The charges also say that beginning on Feb. 1, 2010 until June 3, 2010, Stager collected a $25 fee from “about 43” golfers signing up for summer leagues. He collected a total of $1,030 and deposited it in his personal checking account.

When Stager failed to turn over the money, he was fired.

Riverview discovered the missing summer league fees in November 2010, when it started getting phone calls from participants about when a luncheon featuring prizes would be held. Riverview had to pay for the luncheon and prizes – at a cost of $2,064.