By Patric Hedlund, TME

Vigilant parents are a formidable force when it comes to protecting their children. The call came in to The Mountain Enterprise April 2. Parents in Ridgecrest were up in arms about a substitute teacher who had allegedly touched a first grade student in a way that was creepy.

He said his name is David Whitley. But parents from Sierra Sands Unified School District in Ridgecrest were able to link David Whitley quickly with the identity of David Allan Deshler, whose parents lived in Pine Mountain Club.

In 2008 The Mountain Enterprise reported Deshler lost a job before it began at Frazier Mountain High School. Vigilant parents here saw him being a little too friendly with their children in the PMC swimming pool at the end of the summer vacation.

One parent told him to back off. The wife of a firefighter-paramedic Scott Robinson followed him to the parking lot where she noticed New Mexico plates on his car. That led to discovery of an indictment in New Mexico for inappropriate touching of a girl at James H. Rodriguez Elementary School.

Within hours The Mountain Enterprise staff pitched in with old-fashioned investigative journalism skills to lay out a pattern of hirings and firings of a man who has learned how to game the weaknesses of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and Live Scan systems, flying under the radar.

Deshler’s professional life appears to be a repetitive cycle of being hired as a teacher, then being fired—under a variety of artful, bureaucratic terms—for what the complaints report appeared to be a repetitive cycle of inappropriate behavior with children.

David Deshler, using his own name, has repeated this pattern in New Mexico, Arizona, California, the middle east and Asia. He claimed to this reporter to have secured (or to be in the process of securing) school administrator’s credentials in South Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota.

He filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Navajo tribal police for arresting him, charging him with trespassing and then allegedly strip-searching him.

He had returned without permission on the last day of the school year. In his lawsuit he claims it was “to secure closure” with students in a second grade class from which he had been removed. He said he had brought small gifts for the children. Personnel at the school allege he asked children to reach into his pants pocket for candy.

Whichever is accurate, he was charged with trespassing, arrested and forcibly removed.

Now the Ridgecrest family is planning to file a complaint with the state, according to parent Shenandoah Flowers.

Photo captions:

Left: In 2008, angry parents threatened to mob David Allan Deshler at a Concert on the Greens at Pine Mountain Club as a reporter was asking him why he had lost so many teaching jobs.

Left: David Deshler as he appeared in 2008 at that boisterous PMC event. Above: “David Whitley” in his 2019 Facebook page. David Deshler has changed his name and secured a credential and clearance through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to be a substitute teacher, angry parents in Ridgecrest alleged last week.

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This is part of the April 12, 2019 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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