GUILDERLAND — Guilderland zoning-board member Sindi Saita’s financial world is collapsing.

Two court judgments have gone against her and her business, Apropros Prom & Bridal.

Saita was evicted from the space she rented on Western Avenue in Guilderland and moved her shop to Latham.

A seamstress who worked for her wants to garnish the wages Saita is paid by the town.

And foreclosure proceedings have been brought against her Guilderland home.

Seamstress Rosa DeLuca worked for Saita for a few years doing dress alterations at her home each spring, when the shop was busiest. Soon after DeLuca filed a claim against Saita in Albany City Court’s small-claims division, she received a handwritten note from her. The note asked DeLuca to pray for Saita, to help “release this curse” keeping her from making money, “so I can pay my bills.”

Kenneth M. Raymond Jr., owner of 1801 Western Ave. in Guilderland — the location until January of her shop — received a judgment for more than $15,000 in unpaid rent and other expenses in February 2018, although he says Saita has yet to pay him a dime. Saita was evicted in December and has moved her dress shop to 897 Troy-Schenectady Rd. in Latham

“I’m just very disappointed with her business practices,” Raymond said. “She doesn’t live up to her responsibilities.”

He and Saita agreed in Guilderland Town Court that she would pay two months’ rent, “and I would let her out of her lease.” But “she defaulted on everything,” he said.

Saita declined requests for comment, instead referring The Enterprise to her attorney, Deborah H. Sheehan of Albany. Sheehan told The Enterprise that the rent at the new address is much less expensive.

Saita is trying to make an arrangement to pay Raymond, Sheehan said.

Raymond told The Enterprise he is trying other avenues to get the money Saita owes him. He has filed a lien against her home and all of her assets, he said, adding, “But I don’t see anything coming out of it.”

Why?

“There are other liens in front of me,” he said simply.

According to documents filed with the Albany County Supreme Court, Saita’s home at 12 Wedgewood Lane, in the Weatherfield neighborhood of Guilderland, is in foreclosure proceedings.

Raymond lives in Watervliet but grew up in Guilderland, he said, and does not believe that Saita should represent the town on its zoning board.

Seamstress

Rosa DeLuca, 67, started learning how to sew and embroider when she was about 8 years old. In those days, in Salerno, Italy, where she was born and raised, children went to school and then, in the afternoons, learned a trade.

“Over there, go to school in morning,” she said. “You’re home one o’clock, one-thirty.”

Parents didn’t want to see children “doing nothing at home,” she said.

Elementary-school-age children learned skills like embroidery, tailoring, carpentry. “Neat. Tailor,” she said, her hands mimicking fastidious stitches. “You had to do it, and do it good,” she said. “Or do it again.”

At 23, DeLuca came to the United States with her husband, whom she had met in Italy. He had immigrated to the U.S. as a child with his family, but often visited the old country.

In Fort Johnson, near Amsterdam, where she still lives, DeLuca raised two daughters, and then helped raise her grandchildren, she said.

DeLuca has known Saita for many years, she said, because Apropos was located in Amsterdam for two decades before it moved to Guilderland. Their families have been friends for years, she said.

In 1995, DeLuca took in some alterations work from the Amsterdam shop and was paid for it, she said.

Apropos then hired a full-time seamstress, DeLuca said, and she didn’t do any more alterations for the shop until about four years ago, when Saita asked DeLuca to work at home for her again, during prom season.

DeLuca says she told Saita, “Sindi, if you treat me good, I will help you.”

The work she did was painstaking. She took dresses in or let them out, which meant doing the same with their linings; she removed elaborate beadwork and then, after altering the dress, sewed it back on; and she customized dresses as requested, creating a shawl or adding a new part to a dress.

“I wouldn’t even go to bed sometimes, because I’ve got to get it done,” DeLuca said. “They’ve got to go to prom. I was go crazy, but that’s OK. Late, late at night.”

Saita was always behind in her payments to DeLuca after moving the shop to Guilderland, DeLuca claims.

One year, DeLuca did 200 dresses for Apropos, she says. Saita would pay part of what she owed her, and tell DeLuca to expect more soon. A year would then go by, she said, before she would receive “a little bit again.”

But she kept on working for Saita in good faith, she said. “We were good friends,” DeLuca said.

The last dress DeLuca did for Saita, she said, was one that Saita had telephoned about, begging her to do it, saying, “I’ll pay you, I’ll pay you.” It was for a girl who needed the alterations right away. The girl brought the dress to DeLuca’s house and wanted to wait while it was done, although DeLuca asked her to come back in a couple of hours instead.

“That was the last one I did for her,” DeLuca said, adding that she called Saita after that, asked her whether she planned to pay, and said, “Because if you’re not going to pay, I’m not going to do no more.”

Saita’s answer, DeLuca said, was, “Really? Well, I don’t like your work anyway.”

DeLuca says Saita had agreed to pay her $30 per dress and that, as of August 2016, Saita owed her a total of $7,600.

DeLuca and her daughter went to see Saita at the Guilderland shop on Aug. 29, 2016; Saita told her at that time that she did not want to pay $30 a dress.

“That’s not nice,” DeLuca told The Enterprise.

The seamstress asked Saita how much she wanted to pay, saying she would accept $25, DeLuca said.

Saita gave DeLuca a check for $1,000 on the spot and agreed to pay the rest in installments of $1,000 on the 10th of every month, according to DeLuca.

But that was the last payment she received, DeLuca said.

A year later, on July 26, 2017, DeLuca filed in small-claims court.

A proceeding was scheduled for Sept. 12, 2017. Saita did not appear, instead sending the judge a handwritten letter with the date “September 1, 2017” written across the top in looping cursive, but stamped with the words “FILED SEP 11 2017.”

The letter said Saita could not be in court on Sept. 12. Saita wrote: “I am unable to attend the court date on September 12, 2017. I have to attend an annual trade show and it is imperative that I attend.”

Saita went on to write to the judge, “Mrs. DeLuca did alterations for my store and completed the job in many cases inferior. She wanted to be paid $25.00 per dress and after she did the work $30.00 per dress.

“I received many customer complaints on her sewing,” Saita wrote, “and I had to reorder a few dresses that were rushed.”

In the letter, Saita asked for the proceeding to be rescheduled. If it could not be rescheduled, she asked for a payment plan of installments of $500 per month. She attached to the letter an image of a check for $500 made out to DeLuca from Apropos.

They never received that $500 check, DeLuca and her daughter say.

Judge Helena Heath did not reschedule, and made a default judgment in favor of DeLuca, ordering Saita to pay DeLuca $5,000 — the maximum allowed in small-claims court — as well as $20 in costs.

Maria Mastrocinque, DeLuca’s daughter, told The Enterprise, “You don’t give a person three- or four-hundred dresses and then say, ‘You don’t do a good job.’ That doesn’t make any sense.”

She continued, “There were never any complaints about any of the work my mother did. My mother’s work is precise; it’s flawless. You can’t tell where the alterations were made.” Saita was always satisfied with her mother’s work, Mastrocinque said, until DeLuca insisted on being paid.

This month, DeLuca filed paperwork with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office to try to garnish Saita’s zoning-board pay. Calls and emails to the sheriff’s office about the status of this request were not answered by press time.

Zoning-board members make an annual salary, according to the town’s personnel administrator, Stacia Smith-Brigadier, of $5,381, paid biweekly. Saita, who is enrolled as a Republican, was unanimously appointed to the zoning board in 2014 for two years to fill out the term left vacant with the death of James Sumner.

Saita’s current term on the board runs through the end of 2020.

Zoning-board Chairman Thomas Remmert did not return a call asking for comment.

Another option might be to try to freeze Saita’s credit, Mastrocinque said, until she makes payment, but DeLuca is hesitant. “We don’t want to hurt her,” Mastrocinque said. “We don’t want to go to that extreme.”

A year ago, numerous unresolved customer complaints against Apropos about dresses that arrived very late or not at all had earned the shop an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau.

The shop still has an F rating.

Melanie McGovern, communications director for the Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York, outlined the reasons why the store’s rating is unchanged at an F:

In four complaints filed with the bureau about Apropos, the business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good-faith effort to resolve it. In eight other cases, the business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either did not accept the response or did not notify the bureau to express satisfaction with the resolution. In two other cases, dating from October 2017, the business did not respond to the complaints.

Saita’s view

Sheehan, Saita’s lawyer, speaking in her stead, said that Saita is trying to work out an arrangement for payment with Kenneth Raymond, the landlord.

All she needs to do, Raymond said, is have her lawyer call his. “She has been very clear with me that everything must go through her lawyer,” he said. “She has the amount of the settlement that she had requested, which I agreed to.”

But Saita disputes Rosa DeLuca’s claims, Sheehan said. “Sindi never had her day in court, as far as that goes,” Sheehan said. The attorney added, “She says there’s some issues with the work, and she overbilled her.”

Default judgments, when the defendant does not come to court, Sheehan said, are “subject to being reopened,” which she said she will “most likely do.” She added, “Sindi represents to me that she was overbilled.”

Small-claims court guidelines do allow for reopening cases settled by default judgment, if the losing party can show “good cause” for reopening it. The decision about whether to reopen a case is up to the judge’s discretion, according to the handbook, “Small Claims Court Guide.”

The guide does not give a time frame for the period in which a case involving a default judgment can be reopened, but Sheehan said it was a year.

A clerk at the Albany City Court - Civil Part who gave her name simply as Beth said that a defendant can ask for a case to be reopened at any point during the 20 years that a judgment remains valid. “I’m doing some orders to show cause now from 2007,” the clerk said.

Asked about the image of the $500 check attached to a letter sent to the judge — money DeLuca says she never received — Saita’s attorney said, “I have not seen that.”

Timeline of legal proceedings against Sindi Saita  

— Sept. 12, 2017: Seamstress Rosa DeLuca receives a default judgment in her favor in the Albany City Court’s small-claims division. The judgment orders Sindi Saita to pay DeLuca $5,000 in back pay as well as $20 in costs. Saita had sent the court a handwritten letter dated Sept. 1 but filed in court Sept. 11 stating that, due to a scheduling conflict, she could not be at the court on Sept. 12, and asking to have the proceeding rescheduled. To that letter, she attached an image of a check for $500 made out to DeLuca, as evidence of ongoing efforts to pay. DeLuca says she never received this check.

— Nov. 10, 2017: Landlord Kenneth M. Raymond Jr., through 1801 Western Avenue, LLC, sends Saita a 10-day notice of lease termination for her dress shop, Apropos Prom and Bridal, which was then located in the building. The document specifies that $26,674.46 is due, including $12,633 in unpaid rent from September through November 2017, as well as $11,440.65 in school taxes and $2,600.81 in utility charges.

— Dec. 11, 2017: Judge John Bailey of Guilderland Town Court signs a warrant of eviction against Saita that includes a stay until Jan. 15, 2018, by which time she must move her dress shop out of 1801 Western Ave. According to Kenneth Raymond’s assistant, Nancy Ragosta, she “never moved out until Jan. 19th, 2018.”

— Jan. 10, 2018: Saita signs an affidavit of confession of judgment in Guilderland Town Court, stating that she owes $15,156.64 to 1801 Western Avenue LLC. The affidavit says she owes this amount to settle a dispute related to a March 2015 lease agreement.

— Feb. 6, 2018: Albany County Supreme Court Judge Roger D. McDonough orders Saita to pay $15,156.64 to 1801 Western Avenue, LLC.

— April 5, 2018: Mortgage company Nationstar files foreclosure proceedings against Saita’s home at 12 Wedgewood Lane in Guilderland, according to documents on file with the Albany County Clerk’s office. According to the documents, Saita owes $252,000.

— June 4, 2018: DeLuca files paperwork with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office in an effort to garnish Saita’s pay from the town of Guilderland for her work on the zoning board. Members of that board earn $5,381 per year, paid biweekly.