This is just a human interest story from years gone by. 

Long ago I found myself Exec VP and GM of a Seattle-based company with offices in both Washington and Oregon including one in Edmonds. 

One of the two owners of the company had a long service station background and, as a consequence, was motivated to hire a man who had recently owned a fairly successful service station but had run afoul of the law. 

It seems that whatever cash payments he received for services went into his pocket rather than through the cash register. 

He was stealing from himself to avoid taxes.  And... he bragged about it to his wife.  Mistake! 

Eventually they divorced and she squealed on him.  He came to work for us while he was awaiting trial. 

I hadn't hired him and didn't trust him but avoided taking it out on him. It wasn't his fault that one of our owners had shown what I thought to be very bad judgment in hiring him. 

Soon it become evident, though I had no proof, that his stealing habit continued only now it was our company from whence came his ill-gotten gains. 

I came to dislike him intensely but the owner who had hired him stubbornly supported him.  He seemed to think service station people could do no wrong and were the hardest working folks on the planet.  I was overruled in my decision to fire him. 

The time came when he was tried, convicted and sentenced to three to five years in the federal prison on McNeil Island near Tacoma.  Even though I had no respect for him I felt that, as an ex-employee, I should show some compassion and visit him there. 

I did and came away feeling sorry for the bandit because of indignities such as the required body cavity search after seeing a visitor. 

I wrote letters to the then governor and the members of the parole board and had them signed by the other owner of our company, a very well known and highly respected Seattle lawyer, extolling this man's virtues (in actuality he had none) and assuring the addressees that, upon his release, his old job awaited him. 

I can't say for sure that these letters helped but, after only a year, he was paroled.  He seemed appreciative and, naively, I imagined he would mend his ways.  As a Tom Hanks character once said, "Stupid is as stupid does." 

A month after he returned to his old job, I caught him red-handed stealing us blind.  I was kinda young then and I have since concluded that I, like the Pennsylvania Dutch proverb, "got too soon old and too late schmart." 

I fired the varmint finally.