The mother of a student who attended a private high school in Carmel Valley admitted in court Wednesday to furnishing marijuana and prescription pills to teens at the school and using one teen to sell pot, an investigation prompted after one student’s parents found pills in their child’s room.
Kimberly Dawn Quach, 49, pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court to five charges related to drug possession or sales, and faces between 8 years to 11 years, 8 months in prison when she is sentenced in August, the District Attorney’s Office said.
Her fiancé, William Sipperley, pleaded guilty to two charges, including using a teen to sell marijuana. The 50-year-old is looking at six years to 10 years in state prison, the office said. He, too, will be sentenced in August.
Authorities said last fall that between January and September 2017, Quach had used a teenager to sell pot to students at Cathedral Catholic High School, as well as to students from La Jolla.
In a search warrant affidavit filed in October, San Diego police investigators said Quach taught the teen how to sell pot and collect payments in cash and online.
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The document painted Quach’s home as a place where minors knew they could obtain and smoke marijuana, as well as alcohol and nicotine products.
“It is known at the school that if you need anything, you can have Quach buy it for you,” a police investigator wrote in the search warrant affidavit.
According to the search warrant affidavit, Quach came under suspicion after parents of a teenager found suboxone in their daughter’s room, then text messages between their daughter and Quach. The girl asked Quach for pain medication and Quach supplied her with suboxone, a controlled substance associated with treating opioid dependence but also reportedly used for pain relief.
In her plea, Quach admitted to providing a minor with suboxone, and also admitted supplying Xanax, a powerful tranquilizer.
A search of the home Quach shared with Sipperley and her two children turned up marijuana plants drying on tables throughout the home, as well as planters, grow lights and other items used to grow the plant.
After Quach’s arrest in late September, Sipperley eventually fell out of sight. Investigators found and arrested him in January.
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