Here is the bio for the Admissions Director:
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Gayle DeGraff is Admissions Director of Top Flight Academy. She is the mother of five children, all of whom have participated in wilderness programs with the exception of her youngest daughter. She has first-hand experience in observing powerful results from the opportunity for teens to ?find themselves? as a result of experiencing a therapeutic program. She has been involved in the at-risk teen industry since 1988. She began as Admissions Director for Challenger Foundation, moved to Summit Quest, and was also involved in admissions at Red Rock Canyon School and Red Rock Ranch Academy before joining the staff at Top Flight Academy.
http://topflightacademy.com/inside.php?link=bios-----------------------------------------------
FYI: Challenger was a Steve Cartisano program. Summit Quest was a start-up program run by a lady named Gayle D. Palmer who used to work for Challenger. Michelle Sutton was killed while participating in the Summit Quest program in May 1990.
READ MORE: Excerpt from LOVING THEM TO DEATH, Outside Magazine, October 1995
"As Cartisano's financial and legal difficulties mounted, the Challenger admissions director, a woman named Gayle Palmer, quit to start her own wilderness-therapy company, Summit Quest Inc. Palmer knew little about the backcountry or therapy beyond what she'd gleaned from pitching Challenger courses. "But Palmer got tired of working for Steve," says Doug Nelson, "so she hung out her shingle." Five students were enrolled in the inaugural Summit Quest course, which cost $13,900 for 63 days. Palmer sent the group to the arid Shivwits Plateau, near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, supervised by two young counselors who were paid minimum wage. During the first several days, Michelle Sutton--a pretty 15-year-old who had enrolled voluntarily to regain self-esteem after an alleged date rape--complained repeatedly of exhaustion, sunburn, and nausea. As the group hiked through the desert, she vomited up most of the water she tried to drink and pleaded that she could not go on. According to counselors' field reports gathered by state and federal investigators, the lead counselor had been ordered to ignore such talk as manipulative behavior. "You have been sloughing off," she told Sutton. "You are now being warned." On May 9, 1990, during an ascent of 7,072-foot Mount Dellenbaugh, Sutton's speech became slurred, she cried out that she couldn't see, and then she lost consciousness and died. Palmer insisted to officials that Sutton had succumbed to a drug overdose, but the coroner found no drugs in her system and determined the cause of death to be dehydration. Although no charges were filed, Cartisano was quick to lash out at Palmer in the media, accusing her of criminal incompetence. "At Challenger," he gloated, "a tragedy like the one that killed Michelle Sutton could never happen."
FYI: A child did die while in a Challenger program, Kristen Chase, who was killed in June 1990.
source:
http://web.outsideonline.com/magazine/1 ... _deth.htmlGayle DeGraff, Gayle D. Palmer. Two different people who share a common past?
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