(I am posting from the ladies room at Avila’s)
What a wild ride for Ricky Avila. He is back in the restaurant and, thanks to a Dallas judge, back in control of his business. All of the staff, including Peter Tarantino, is here. I just spoke with Ricky and his fiancé, Michelle.
Ricky had to get a restraining order to keep his brother and two sisters from taking over the restaurant.”It was maybe the first vacation I’ve planned in 20 years,” he said. “This is the wake up call I think I needed.”
Basically his siblings, who were never interested in running the restaurant, now want a piece of the post-Diners, Drive-ins & Dives revenue. There is another hearing on Thursday. The sticky point is the building which is owned by their ailing 88-year old mother. I get that Ricky is going to move the restaurant to another location. More details on Thursday. (Excuse the weirdness of this post. First time I’ve blogged from my phone. In a bathroom.)
UPDATE: Below the jump are two e-mails from Michelle outlining this week’s ordeal.
Thursday Update: Another e-mail from Michelle with news.
Written at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, February 9:
As most of you know, we were leaving Sunday to fly to Hawaii to get some space and perspective on the restaurant. Ricardo has been
bombarded with intense bullying from his family for several months now… as a result he has decided to move the restaurant. (Ricardo
owns the restaurant, his family the current building). We were going away to get some rest before construction starts on the new restaurant
in March and to give us view of things that we can’t see from here.
We left at 6:15 am Sunday morning, got to LA and received a phone call that caused us to get off our flight to Honolulu and on the next
flight back to Dallas.
Ricardo’s family broke into the restaurant at 8 am Sunday morning and fired most of Ricardo’s staff and took over. The police were called
BUT because his older brother, Octavio, is a handyman… they had cleaned up all the break in evidence and the police considered it at
that point a civil matter.. which they can’t get involved in.
Ricardo’s manager, Peter[Tarantino], was threatened with the possible use of a weapon and received many horrible comments, voice mails and texts.
Ricardo’s power of attorney, Susan Nelson, witnessed the rude and inappropriate behavior. (Thanks to both of you for standing up for
Ricardo!) We do have a great lawyer who called us back to Dallas and we’ve come back to place an injunction on his family. We met with the
lawyer all day yesterday, getting home at 10 pm and are going to court this morning.
His family will be in trouble legally for many of the things they did (including theft, selling liquor without a license, breaking and
entering, etc.) BUT that is nothing compared to the damage they did to Ricardo with this extreme bullying behavior. He is in need of
support, love, prayers…. all the positive energy you can send! I will let you know the results of the court hearing today!! SO stay
tuned!! Ricardo should be back in control of the restaurant by this
afternoon.
Later Tuesday:
We went to court this morning and won a Temporary Restraining Order. The TRO means Ricardo is back in the restaurant and running things!
YEAH!! Step one is a victory!! Now, we have some big decisions to make as we go back to court on the 18th of February to have a hearing… unless, we reach some agreement with the family before then. We really like the judge, Ken Molberg. He ruled in our favor within 10 minutes and told the family to behave themselves or they would have to answer to him. Despite this… the family continued with their hostile behavior and Ricardo’s sister, Anna Maria tried to trip Susan Nelson and I with her mom’s walker as we left the court room, another sister, Patricia, went out of her way to physically run into Ricardo as we walked with our attorney to the elevators, Ricardo’s brother became hostile with our attorney….. so the circus goes on! We pray for our safety as these people are very emotional and acting out in anger and fear. WE have compassion and hope they can find some peace.
Thursday morning Feb. 11
I wanted to update all of you again…
We actually got some sleep last night so…. we feel much better today
and needed to….. as we heard from our attorney that
Ricardo was sent an e-mail last night from his family that carried
threats and an unreasonable offer of what we needed to
pay them in rent to stay in the building! He said the e-mail was
sooooo awful that he was not going to send it to us! (We can just
imagine!!!)
