Crisis at the Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op leaves unanswered questions

UKIAH, CA., 5/8/26 — Ukiah Natural Foods Co-op, the 50-year-old member-owned grocery at the center of Mendocino County’s organic-food economy, is without a general manager again. Robert Drake, hired this spring to replace longtime manager Lori Rosenberg, was terminated days after more than half the co-op’s staff walked off the job on April 27.

The walkout came after staff and members learned Drake had been listed on a sex offender registry — a fact the co-op’s board has since acknowledged it knew before hiring him.

In a written statement to employees that has been widely reproduced in the days since, the board of directors said Drake had been “involved in an incident more than 23 years ago that resulted in his inclusion on the sex offender registry.”

The board said he had “maintained a clean record” since, “built a long and consistent work history,” and “demonstrated the experience and leadership that qualifies him for his current role.” The board added that it “believe[s] in accountability, growth, and the possibility of personal repair.”

Within days of issuing that statement, the board reversed itself and fired him.

The fight inside the co-op now is no longer about Drake. It is about how he was hired — and why, in a 7,100-member institution that prides itself on transparency, the decision was made by three people behind a closed door.

What the court records show

The board’s “23 years ago” framing is its own. The court records, retrieved this week from primary sources, are more specific.

Drake was charged in the summer of 2003 with four felony counts of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, including a count alleging the victim was under 15 and three counts involving the 15-to-17-year-old age bracket. On Dec. 5, 2003, he was found guilty of one sexual assault count and was sentenced to eight years on Colorado’s Sex Offender Intensive Supervision Program, the state’s most stringent form of probation. The remaining three counts were dismissed by the district attorney the same day, a structure consistent with a plea agreement.

Drake’s public career resumé shows him beginning his food cooperative career at Hungry Hollow Co-op in New York in November 2012 — within months of when the eight-year Colorado supervision imposed at the December 2003 sentencing would have been scheduled to end.

And he has put on paper, in a letter to co-op staff distributed during the walkout week, his own dating of the underlying event: “Twenty-three years ago I made a decision that was the worst of my life. But it has also served as the greatest learning opportunity. Since that time I have committed myself to living a life of honesty and integrity.”

In that same letter, Drake writes that he “voluntarily disclosed [his] past to the Board” before being hired — the first independent confirmation, in his own words, that what is on the registry is the past he disclosed.

Asked in writing over the past two weeks for more details, the Ukiah co-op board did not respond. Drake, contacted by email, did not respond.

How the search worked

The co-op posted its general manager listing on Good Food Jobs on Dec. 9, 2024, advertising a salary of $120,000 to $140,000, with the successful hire reporting directly to the board. According to the board’s own account of the process, the search was led by an executive committee of three directors: board president Gideon Burdick, treasurer Tim Dolan, and vice president Angie McChesney.

The committee did not include the co-op’s human resources department in the hiring decision. It also did not consult Rosenberg, the outgoing manager, who had been at the store for roughly 40 years. And it passed over two internal candidates — the grocery manager and the head of HR — whose names have not been made public.

The contradiction at the center of the board’s response to staff is plain. In a separate letter to employees this week, signed by Burdick, the board told staff with concerns about “safety or conduct at work” to “raise them through the appropriate internal channels.” But staff already knew that the co-op’s primary internal channel — its HR department — had been excluded from the vetting of the man they’d hired to run the store.

The walkout

On the morning of April 27, more than half of the co-op’s employees walked off the job. The co-op opened that day understaffed; what shoppers found inside the South State Street store was a thinner crew, hand-lettered signs, and a board statement that hadn’t yet caught up to the news on the floor.

The walkout had been building over the prior weekend, after a post in the Facebook group Ukiah Caught on Camera identified Drake’s name on the registry. The group’s administrator, June Jackson, has since said staff did not walk because of that Facebook post — they walked because the board had been told and had hired him anyway.

By the end of the week, Drake was gone. The exact date of his termination has not been released by the co-op; staff and community sources place it between April 30 and May 2. The board has not issued a public statement explaining the reversal.

In the same window, Drake circulated his own letter to staff, signed simply “Rob.” He wrote that he was “shocked and saddened by everything that has happened this week” and that he “deeply appreciate[d] the support of our Board.”

He described his entry into food cooperatives 15 years ago as having given him “a passion for service to community which has driven me ever since, and eventually brought me and my family here to Ukiah.”

He pushed back on what he called “false rumors” without specifying which, and he closed by inviting any community member to “sit down with me … over coffee” to talk.

“Fear hides in the shadows while open communication brings us into the light,” he wrote, “and that is where I invite us to go now together.”

What we know about Drake’s working life

Drake is a 14-year veteran of the U.S. food-cooperative industry. According to his public LinkedIn profile, he started at Hungry Hollow Co-op in New York in November 2012 as a produce clerk and rose through the store, serving as co-general manager during a 2016–2017 board search. He moved to BriarPatch Food Co-op in Grass Valley in 2019 as pricing and category manager, then was hired in September 2023 as general manager of Urban Greens Co-op Market in Providence, Rhode Island. He left Urban Greens in April 2025.

Whether any of those three prior employers was contacted as a reference by the Ukiah board, and what was said if they were, has not been disclosed.

Where it goes from here

A petition is circulating in the Ukiah Caught on Camera group calling for the seated board to be replaced. Mentioned in the petition thread are Burdick, Dolan, and McChesney — the executive committee that ran the search. The board’s three other publicly named directors — secretary Christine Rodrigues, Stephen Turner, and Kyle Mayers — have not, as of this writing, said publicly whether they had a vote on Drake’s hire.

The board’s next regular meeting is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on May 18 at the co-op. By long-standing Co-op practice, the meeting is open to member-owners. It will be the first time the co-op’s 7,100 member-owners can put questions to the executive committee directly: who made the decision to hire Drake, what they relied on, and what the board is doing to bring its staff back.

Rosenberg, who built this store across four decades, has not yet spoken publicly. The board has not yet answered a written request for the dates of Drake’s hire and termination, the basis for the “clean record” assertion, or the executive committee’s authority to act without full-board concurrence.

This story will be updated.