Member-only story
The Teacher. The Basketball Coach. The Dead Rat In the Mail.
Inside the #MeToo crisis—and coverup—sparked at Golden Valley High
(I) “All This and a Brain, Too”
Annie Delgado was never big on sports-related social gatherings. The only reason the Golden Valley High School teacher had come to the Athletic Hall of Fame dinner for a rival high school was to see her father-in-law inducted for his volunteer support of local teams.
As she crossed the rec building at the county fairgrounds to order her husband a drink, Delgado weaved through tables set with roses and cloth napkins in the school’s colors, Halloween orange and black. The 600 attendees in the crowd that night — March 25, 2017 — were mostly white, mostly affluent residents of Merced, California, a Central Valley farming town located an hour northwest of Fresno.
The $1,000 sponsorship tables up front had been claimed by the Razzari family’s Ford dealership, Elks Lodge 1240, and the other usual suspects. The new Miss Merced County and Miss Merced County’s Outstanding Teen were there, wearing twin white sashes and tiaras. A handful of coaches from the six core campuses of the Merced Union High School District (MUHSD) were also in attendance, still as popular as they’d been as teenagers racking up touchdowns and…
