Ruby Corado: Casa of Cards

0:00Parler tout français. Hablas espanol. Parler l 'italiano. If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash wandery. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Wondery. Rules and restrictions may apply. You may have heard of the sex cult NXIVM and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack.

0:47But she's never told her side of the story until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed and in my new podcast, I talk to Alison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member and what she thinks of it all now. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma to other people? I mean, I don't even know how to answer that question. Allison, after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This episode includes discussion of sexual assault and self-harm that some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.

1:27It was a sunny September day back in 2021. In an unassuming building on R Street in Washington, D.C., a group of dedicated employees and volunteers were providing critical services to some of the nation's most vulnerable people, mostly young LGBTQ plus people of color. These were the clients of Casa Ruby, a nonprofit organization created to protect and serve members of the LGBTQ plus community. Over the years, the shelter had become more than just a place to work. It was also a home. The people who worked and lived there were like a family. And the matriarch at the center of it all was the organization's founder, Ruby Corrado.

2:13The staff wasn't expecting 50-year-old Corrado to come in that day. She had her hands full spearheading all of Casa Ruby's many operations, and she couldn't be everywhere all at once. but she did show up and it was with the worst news imaginable. Setting down her designer handbag, Corrado gathered the staff around her and made her announcement. One of the shelter's main sponsors had withdrawn its support. Without their funding, Casa Ruby had to close its doors. Immediately. This meant that everyone working there had lost their jobs. their source of income and purpose, and even more urgently, all of their clients needed to find somewhere else to rest their heads.

3:03But before people could start making arrangements, Corrado asked for a group photo. She told everyone to look sad, which probably wasn't necessary. There was already plenty to be sad about. But Corrado was already thinking ahead. She later posted that sad group shot as part of a GoFundMe post, which raked in over$180 ,000. That money was meant to go towards reopening the organization's doors. But the doors never reopened. Casa Ruby never saw a single dollar of it.

3:47This is The Opportunist, an original podcast from Podcast one. You're listening to a story told in one episode called Ruby Corrado, Casa of Cards. I'm Sarah James McLaughlin. In this episode, we tell the tale of Casa Ruby, a once thriving center that closed its doors amid chaos and charges that its founder had stolen hundreds of thousands from the vulnerable community she promised to help.

4:48Imagine growing up in a world where every day you feel like something is wrong with you. Because every interaction that you have with people, they make you feel like you're less than a human being. But also imagine that you know that those people are wrong. Because you believe that deep inside of you, there's a beautiful human being that just needs to have an opportunity. Ruby Corrado was born in El Salvador, a country that was consumed by civil war from the late 1970s to the early 90s. In addition to that turmoil, Corrado was in particular danger because of her gender identity. She was transgender, and violence against trans people was a very serious threat.

5:40I was only a teenager when my dad put me on a bus all the way from San Salvador, El Salvador, in Central America. Supposedly, I was fleeing a civil war. Maybe the shame of a father raising a transgender child. Corrado ended up in Washington, D.C., where she mostly had to fend for herself. We spoke with Britt Peterson, a journalist who covered Corrado extensively and provided some context on the LGBTQ plus scene in the Capitol. D.C. has long been a very welcoming city for LGBTQ people. But, you know, for decades, going back to, you know, like the 19th century, it's always had a very vibrant and alive LGBTQ community.

6:31It's very racially diverse. There's a very large Latinx community here, a very large Black community here. But while the district was more welcoming and safe than her home country of El Salvador, she still faced serious dangers and obstacles. At the same time, there has historically been a lot of violence towards especially trans women of color here. There's a history of police violence, of domestic partner violence that also goes back many years. And there is a real youth homeless problem here in which LGBTQ youth are like very much overrepresented. Corrado herself struggled to keep a roof over her head at the tender age of 16.

7:15She claims to have worked as a live-in maid for a family until the father attempted to sexually assault her. She was forced to run away and survive on the streets. This experience would shape her and give her an intimate understanding of what life was like for many young queer people in D.C. A large percentage of LGBTQ people, and especially trans people, you know, when they come out to their families, are rejected, kicked out, lose housing. They can fall out of the foster care system for various reasons, including abuse or rejection. There just aren't a lot of support systems in place specifically for people who have these very specific needs.

7:58You know, trans kids especially. You know, I don't know what the homeless statistic is, but it's very, very high. According to the CDC, transgender youth are nearly 10 times more likely to experience homelessness than their non-transgender peers. So this is not specific to D.C. it's not specific to America, it's just like an overall problem that is very serious, and for which there are like actually very few workable solutions. Like some of these youth end up doing survivor sex work, some of them end up killed or die, become abused sexually, or get addicted to different substances. You know, it can really depend on the kids own resources.

8:47If this is like a wealthy kid from the suburbs who's able to move in with a friend's family. It's a very different situation from like, you know, the child of immigrants, potentially who doesn't even speak English, who's out on the street with very little marketable skills, no knowledge of anyone in the city. You know, imagine you're just kind of a stranger on the streets. You don't know anyone in the city. You know, the difficulty of kind of like building a ladder to get out of there is pretty insurmountable for a lot of people. Fortunately for Corrado, she found solace and support in D.C.'s vibrant drag scene.

9:22It was here that I met my mother, Xavier Bloomingdale. And Xavier was an African-American drag queen who impersonated Cher with her beautiful gowns. This woman was also feeding us. And every evening she would open the doors to new talent. With the support of her newfound community, Corrado was able to get herself back on her feet and land a job in real estate management. She felt a need to give back and began volunteering at a hospice. There, she saw nuns who gave everything they had to care for and support dying people. Witnessing these selfless acts motivated Corrado to do even more for her community, which is what ultimately led her to start Casa Ruby.

10:12She really wanted to make a difference. So she got involved doing things like testifying before the DC Council, being part of task forces that led to changing rules around discrimination against trans people, focusing on conditions in the prisons for trans people. She did a lot of good and was connected to a lot of really powerful people. She's an intensely charismatic person, a very, very powerful personality, and was just kind of going after stuff in a way that not many people were at the time. Just a very vocal advocate who was really not afraid of just showing up at whatever random party, just kind of throwing herself out there in a very, you know, passionate and motivated way.

10:52Despite Corrado's charisma and verve, she again fell on hard times. There was a period of her life that was very, very dark. She'd been abused. She fell into substance abuse. She was homeless on and off. However, Corrado found the silver lining and made something good out of her hardships. Coming out of that phase, she was really motivated to do some good and sort of provide housing in ways that people had provided housing towards her. She had some disability money coming in from Social Security, and she used that to start paying rent on a townhouse. I decided that I needed to take my work into the next stage.

11:34And in 2004, I founded an organization called Casa Ruby. I didn't want just an organization asking for money doing work. I wanted to build a movement of people, the people that were denied an existence right here in this city. I got myself a hold of$12 ,000 I opened the first center on Georgia Avenue by Howard University. It was a humble beginning for Casa Ruby, just a small apartment with a kitchen and a small living room. But Corrado knew how much a simple roof over your head can mean for someone who's been living alone on the streets. After everything she had experienced, fleeing her home country, struggling with homelessness, abuse, mental health issues, she knew exactly what people in similar situations needed.

12:30She just kind of created a space. And because she, you know, with setting up LGBTQ housing for people who have been very turned off by institutions their whole life, who have found institutions in general to be threatening, who really don't trust authority, credibility is kind of the most important thing in terms of like getting people across your doorstep. Ruby was incredibly credible with the people who came across her doorstep because she herself had been a sex worker. She was an immigrant. She was HIV positive. She was just able to connect with people in a way that a lot of larger nonprofit organizations really struggle to because they're not staffed by people who look like their clients.

13:11Ruby had a very similar life story to her clients. So she was able to really help people out and really bring people in because everyone was like, well, of course I'm going to stay at Ruby's. She's like a friend. She's like a mother. They connected to her in this really personal way that was both a strength and then like the giant flaw at the heart of Casa Ruby. So when she created Casa Ruby, it was immediately kind of like people were excited about it. People were excited because Casa Ruby was patching holes in the social safety net, providing services to a community whose needs were not being met anywhere else.

13:47At the time Casa Ruby was opened, like 30 % of homeless youth were LGBTQ, and it's the same today. So like a major problem and something that the city was kind of like piecemealing solutions, but there wasn't the kind of housing where like a kid gets kicked out of their house, they need a place to stay immediately. Like that did not exist. Before Casa Ruby, D.C. had no emergency low barrier beds for kids in immediate need. But Casa Ruby filled in the gaps by providing shelter in addition to many other critical services. Corrado Center also offered assistance with immigration, HIV testing, and resume writing in both English and Spanish.

14:31We spoke with Denzel Mickall, a former employee of Casa Ruby who started out as a volunteer in 2019. Well, I feel like in the beginning it was actually perfect. It was the perfect job, the perfect everything for me. It was like a dream come true just to have so many trans leaders as your boss. For a lot of the people who ended up at Casa Ruby, they came out or were outed in their birth family and they were rejected. You know, if it is a family that has very strong religious values that don't permit accepting LGBTQ children, You know, there are religious communities that teach that it is actually better for your child to be kicked out versus to stay.

15:15So, you know, family conflict can be very intense. I never got kicked out from my family, but I have met a lot of people from other countries, you know, people who lived in the D.C. area who just got kicked out for being themselves. So that can be confusing for someone who is young and they don't know which way to go. So they get on drugs and it's just it's a hard life. And you need, like you said, you need some type of structure with that. A lot of people had definitely benefited from Casa Ruby. It was just even myself, like during the time I was in a life crisis and I was just going through a lot.

16:02And Casa Ruby was just a place for me to feel like home. With that first humble center, Corrado had already accomplished a lot. But she didn't want to stop there. And she didn't want to keep funding Casa Ruby out of her own pocket. So she set her sights on bringing in outside funding. She's just this very clever person, incredibly resourceful and scrappy. she figured out some good funding streams through the DC government. She started reaching out to corporate grants, private grants. You know, she's never, she, you know, hadn't been to college, had zero experience running a nonprofit, no idea what she was doing, but managed very quickly in part because what she was doing was so unique and filled a space that the DC government really needed.

16:52She was very quickly able to command a lot of money. Like it just kind of started flowing in. Yeah. So it started out as that one floor and then she just kind of kept accumulating real estate. Like she would just like rent a new place in DuPont Circle, rent a new place in Southeast. Like she just kind of like added all these different new properties. It was just incredible expansion that was really inspiring to a lot of the people that worked there. They were just so excited. She had so many ideas, you know, like we're going to open like a health clinic. We're going to start, you know, like find ways to offer like PrEP and other HIV, you know, like HIV plus drugs to people on the street.

17:31We're going to, you know, like bring LGBTQ immigrants back from the border. There was constantly some new initiative and she was always building out. As Corrado did all of this work and used her stories to raise more funds for the center, she also raised her own profile. Soon, she was receiving public accolades and rubbing elbows with major DC movers and shakers. She was just really put herself out there. And, you know, that was always justified by being for Casa Ruby and for fundraising for the people that she worked for. But I think increasingly also, it was for herself, for her own personal profile.

18:10As her profile rose, people sought her out to host Pride events or to give quotes on trans issues. In October 2014, Corrado was walked down the aisle at her wedding by Vincent Gray, then mayor of D.C. The next month, she was working on the transition team for the new mayor, Muriel Bowser. And in 2019, she was honored as a Washingtonian of the Year. Corrado attended fancy events and awards galas, presenting a bright, shining image of a successful activist. But all was not well at Casa Ruby. Behind the scenes, a total mess. Even while Ruby was like, her photo was up in the Smithsonian, she won like Washingtonian of the Year.

18:56you know, her, even as her image elevated, like there was a ton of awareness like everywhere that behind the scenes there was just total chaos.

19:07Up next, Ruby Carrado's Casa of Cards starts to fall. Am I the only one overwhelmed by TV these days? It just feels like a never-ending quest to find my favorite shows on countless streaming services. And let's be honest, it's not exactly saving me money. Thankfully, Philo has been a game changer. One simple service, all the shows I love. Each family member can enjoy their own shows with multiple profiles and the ability to stream on up to three devices at once, so I can binge The Last Drive-In while my husband enjoys Seinfeld. And let's not forget their library of more than 75 ,000 movies and shows, all of which can be saved and re-watched any time for a whole year with Philo's unlimited DVR.

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21:31Now, back to the story.

21:36In 2004, trans woman and El Salvadorian immigrant Ruby Corrado started Casa Ruby, a shelter for at-risk LGBTQ plus youth. Initially, Corrado started the organization with funds from her own pocket, even investing$25 ,000 of her own money to keep the doors open. On top of that, she didn't hesitate to give whatever she could, directly to people in need. People viewed her as being incredibly personally generous. Like, she would just give something, like, she would show up and give everyone, like, phone cards. She would help take everyone to the hairdresser. She was constantly handing out shoes and clothes.

22:19She was viewed as being very generous in that sense. But as generous as she may have been, Corrado didn't start Casa Ruby just so she could give her own money away. She had goals to fundraise so she could help even more vulnerable members of the LGBTQ plus community and at a higher level. Within a few years, she had built the center up from a single apartment to multiple facilities with a staff of more than 100. She was a savvy fundraiser. She knew how to meet people with means and exactly how to pull at their heartstrings so they'd open their pocketbooks. For the black and brown activists to be heard by the sort of white donor class people.

23:05And Ruby proved like very, very good at penetrating into that network in a way that other advocates were not able to, not necessarily because of any fault of their own. I think the donor class is specifically interested in some specific voices and some specific stories. Ruby was able to sort of make that connection. Ruby definitely had a lot of connections. And when it became, when it came to her being a, like, migrant from El Salvador, she definitely knew how to use her privilege to gain funds. She knew how to talk. She knew which way to talk. And honestly, I feel like every time she talked, it was like a sob story of, you know, of her being a minority.

23:53And I feel like she used Black trans women to, as guinea pigs, as like the face front to get the funds. she was just constantly planning and constantly thinking about how to build connections and how to make the things happen that she wanted to happen and she was very very savvy in terms of like what would be like inspiring like driving to donors who are mostly white people like i kind of understood it because you have to do what you got to do to get your funds. So at the time, I understood it and I just rolled with the punches, honestly. It seemed that Corrado was willing to say or do whatever it took to keep the money flowing in so she could keep supporting her community.

24:49Her tenacity and determination paid off and allowed her to continue expanding. By 2019, Casa Ruby had 126 employees and was receiving nearly$3.5 million in grants. Between 2016 and 2022, the organization was granted more than$9.6 million. But as all of this money poured in, something was very wrong at Casa Ruby. Well, so, I mean, over time, like, a lot of people were aware that there were pretty serious problems at Casa Ruby. Shelters were behind on rent and in disrepair. One person who moved into a Casa Ruby facility in 2020 described a kitchen overrun with rats and having a broken electrical system with exposed wires.

25:44The resident also claimed people were conducting sex work on the property and employees were doing drugs in the bathrooms. Things were falling through the cracks in a big way. Corrado had started Casa Ruby to provide a safe haven, but her shelters had become home to more of the same dangerous behavior she hoped to protect people from. Former Casa Ruby employee Charmaine Eccles shed some light on the situation. She said of Corrado, She had a stellar team, but she developed a culture of madness. If things were not going insane, it didn't feel right to her. This would be an understandable response for someone like Corrado, who grew up in war-torn El Salvador.

26:32She then moved abruptly to an entirely new country, where she had to fend for herself and face multiple attacks and obstacles. Much of her young life was chaotic, so it's possible that on some level she became comfortable with that chaos. She might have even sought it out. Psychologist Annie Tanasugarn wrote in a Medium article, quote, There are several key behavioral patterns seen when a person has a need for chaos. At the root of this pattern are unmet needs to feel safe, seen, heard, and valued. And in an attempt to numb these unmet needs, a person can begin actively, but often subconsciously, seeking out the very relationships or situations they swore off and swore never again." Whether or not this was the case for Karato, it does seem that she ran Kasurubi in an increasingly chaotic way.

27:33Or at least did very little to try and organize and remove the chaos. For one thing, records show that Corrado functionally made all major decisions regarding Casa Ruby on her own. She decided who to hire and who to fire, how much to pay them and when to pay them. She also had full control of the organization's finances and bank accounts. This was despite the fact that Casa Ruby had a governing board that was supposed to help her run things smoothly. But instead, Corrado handled everything. Or at least, she tried to. Her haphazard management style didn't mix well with the millions of dollars pouring into the organization.

28:21But the fact that no one else at Casa Ruby knew how much money was coming in, or where it was going, did create the perfect opportunity to skim off the top. It seems like things took a turn in this direction around 2018. There was a point where they got, like, I think a million dollar contract from this large, like, healthcare company to help with their HIV testing program. And people say that after that grant was where Ruby kind of started taking a little bit money for herself, showing up at work in like fancy shoes, fancy handbags, bought herself a fancy new car. Casa Ruby was doing well. And Corrado was doing even better.

29:07In 2018, she bought a four-bedroom house in the upscale neighborhood of Upper Marlboro. Visitors said the place was full of luxury items, nearly 10 TVs, clothes, perfume, bags, everything. Corrado also moved in her mini cats. Estimates range from 14 to 30 and her two Pomeranians. Back in 2014, Corrado allowed herself a very modest salary of$32 ,000. But by 2020, she was paying herself a whopping$260 ,000, eight times as much. On one occasion, she wrote herself a$28 ,000 check from Casa Ruby's account. She claimed this was for a performance bonus approved by the board. But it wasn't approved by the board.