CALIFORNIA
Orange County Weekly
By GUSTAVO ARELLANO
Thursday, April 27, 2006 - 1:00 am
Editor’s note: The names of the alleged victims and students in this story have been changed.
In the spring of 1996, an English teacher at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana snatched the following note as students tried to pass it across her classroom:
Linda,
Charles told me, did you hear about Coach Andrade & I said no, what? He goes coach fucked a girl that comes here & I play it off, like Naah. I go who? He goes I don’t know. Some junior. I guess he doesn’t know or maybe he knows that I know. But I swear to God I didn’t tell anyone.
The coach in question was Jeff Andrade, a popular teacher who moonlighted as an assistant coach on Mater Dei’s powerful boys’ basketball program and sold hot dogs from a cart during lunch. The teacher immediately turned over the note to Mater Dei administrators, who summoned Linda for questioning. Linda alleged that Andrade was having an affair with her best friend Nancy—had been since the beginning of the school year. School officials then confronted 15-year-old Nancy and 34-year-old Andrade; both denied any relationship other than teacher and student: Andrade was once Nancy’s driver’s education instructor, and they occasionally talked to each other in the school’s weight room. Mater Dei closed the investigation without taking further action. They never told Nancy’s parents about the note or contacted Orange County Child Protective Services, as they are obligated by law to do.