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A San Mateo County nonprofit executive convicted of laundering more than $700,000 through the now defunct mental health nonprofit StarVista may avoid jail after a judge recommended her for an alternative sentencing program.
Foster City resident Clarise Ann Blanchard, 79, pleaded no contest in October 2025 to three felonies — money laundering, identity theft and failure to file tax returns — under a plea agreement that capped her sentence at three years and four months in state prison. The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office sought a prison sentence, but Superior Court Judge Kevin Dunleavy sentenced her to six months in county jail and recommended her for the Sheriff’s Alternative Sentencing Bureau.
The Sheriff’s bureau allows eligible people to serve out their sentences outside of prison or jail, such as using electronic monitoring or a work program.
District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the Sheriff’s Office has sole discretion over whether to accept someone into the alternative sentencing program unless a judge expressly prohibits participation. Neither the District Attorney’s Office nor the Superior Court is notified of the decision, he said.
The Sheriff’s Office would not confirm whether Blanchard is participating in an alternative sentencing program.
“As a matter of practice, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office does not discuss participation of specific incarcerated persons in its programs,” spokesperson Gretchen Spiker said.
Spiker said the office considers several factors when determining eligibility for alternative sentencing, including public safety and a person’s medical and criminal history.
Blanchard, who was honored as San Mateo County’s 2008 Woman of the Year, worked at StarVista for 20 years, leading programs that assisted victims of domestic violence and incarcerated girls.
After she retired in 2022, StarVista learned Blanchard had opened a bank account in the nonprofit’s name and arranged for a family foundation to deposit donations into it, according to a Santa Clara County probation officer’s report. She used the money for personal expenses, vacations and medical treatments, and forged signatures and thank-you letters from StarVista to cover up the fraud, the report said.
The San Mateo County Probation Department recused itself from evaluating Blanchard because it worked closely with the nonprofit. The Santa Clara County Probation Department conducted the evaluation and recommended “significant” jail time but recommended leaving open the possibility of alternative sentencing programs if Blanchard made restitution payments.
StarVista was one of San Mateo County’s top mental health service providers, receiving more than $17 million in county funding from the start of 2024 until it closed on Aug. 1, 2025, for programs including counseling at-risk youth and crisis lines. At its peak, the nonprofit employed more than 200 people and served more than 38,000 clients annually. It also operated crisis response teams that worked with eight local police departments and collaborated with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office.
In an impact statement written before the shutdown, then-CEO Sara Larios Mitchell said StarVista’s reputation suffered significantly after Blanchard was charged and that the nonprofit spent more than $80,000 on crisis public relations. Mitchell described Blanchard’s actions as duplicitous and reprehensible but said she opposed jail time because of Blanchard’s age.
“For that large of a theft, she got an enormous break by not going to prison,” Wagstaffe said.
He said he believed Blanchard’s age may have influenced the sentence but should not have carried as much weight.
“She’s only five years older than I am,” Wagstaffe said. “I would expect I’d be going to prison if I embezzled that much.”
In response to a California Public Records Act request from this news organization, the Sheriff’s Office also would not release records concerning Blanchard’s participation in an alternative sentencing program.
Records manager Jennifer Prado said the office withholds such records to protect participants and jail staff. She cited the Public Records Act’s public-interest exemption, which permits agencies to withhold records when the public interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure.
“The California Supreme Court has been very clear that vague and generic safety concerns are not enough to justify the agency withholding records under the Public Records Act,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition. “It’s very difficult to see how the sheriff could carry their burden of proof to justify withholding records.”
Loy said an agency might have a stronger argument in a case involving someone like a former member of a drug cartel who had cooperated with prosecutors.
“This is not that kind of case,” Loy said. “There is no ostensible, obvious reason there would be a threat to the safety of someone who pleaded (no contest) to financial crimes, white-collar crimes.”
Wagstaffe said Blanchard would not be the first person convicted of financial crimes to avoid jail. He said he was surprised to learn that former San Carlos Mayor Mike King, who was convicted of fraud in 2006, served his sentence in an alternative program. Wagstaffe said he learned of King’s participation only because he saw him volunteering at a nonprofit as part of his sentence.
