Commune or cult? Costa Mesa’s Piecemakers shuttered after $4.5M court judgment
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Piecemakers, a Costa Mesa Christian-focused store known for selling handmade quilts and offering craft lessons to the public, was recently forced to close its doors amid bankruptcy proceedings spurred by a $4.5-million court ruling against the organization.
An attorney who represented Piecemakers in the original legal dispute confirmed Friday the longstanding country store — located at 1720 Adams Ave. — was shuttered on Jan. 31 by a bankruptcy court trustee.
The closure is an attempt to garner more than $8 million in reported assets following a 2022 verdict in a case brought by a former member who alleged the Christian commune operated as a cult, forcing her to work 12-hour days, six days per week, with no pay, overtime or rest breaks over a 20-year period.
Michelle McKinney, whose attorneys described her as an adult living with a mental illness later found to have been complicated by a brain tumor, claimed in a 2018 lawsuit she earned a weekly allowance of $10 or less, even as the group’s leaders collected food stamps in her name and failed to maintain records of her employment.
In addition to working in the store, McKinney lived in at least one house owned by members of Piecemakers and offered for communal use and residency. A powerful combination of isolation and financial and emotional control prohibited her from leaving, according to the suit filed in Orange County Superior Court on April 2, 2018.
During McKinney’s time at Piecemakers, a young daughter who’d accompanied her upon her arrival from Washington state to Costa Mesa in 1997 was allegedly removed from her care by the group, placed with a surrogate and later removed by group leaders, the lawsuit alleges.
“Piecemakers and its leaders exerted near total control over the plaintiff’s life for the next 20 years,” the lawsuit reads. “During her involvement, she was denied all individual expression. Piecemakers imposed a schedule on Ms. McKinney that gave her essentially no free time. Her every aspect of freedom, both individual and financial, was denied.”
The suit sought damages not only for two decades of lost wages, overtime and meal periods, but also for dependent adult abuse, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of fiduciary duty.
Dubbed ‘Che Kolasinski’ for her militant anti-government stands, she was the driving force behind Costa Mesa’s Piecemakers Country Store. After being jailed in a dispute with Orange County health inspectors, she began ministering to inmates across California.
Attorneys further sought to have a judge declare Piecemakers’ 2003 transition from a limited liability corporation to a general partnership ineffective or to have McKinney named as a partner.
Responding to the complaint, defendants alleged McKinney did not take reasonable steps to avoid or mitigate the alleged damages and brought the lawsuit for the purpose of “harassing defendants and causing them to [expend] unnecessary fees and costs.”
“Plaintiff’s claims, if any, resulted from her efforts as a volunteer for nonprofit organizations involved in religious or humanitarian objectives,” their response reads. “As such, any services performed by the plaintiff were in exchange for aid and sustenance.”
Although members of Piecemakers last week declined to be interviewed by the Daily Pilot, Orange County attorney Tim Donahue, who represented the group in the original lawsuit, explained his view of the case Friday, maintaining his former clients offered McKinney refuge when she had no other options.
Donahue said those in leadership positions at Piecemakers — including founding member Marie Kolasinski, who died in 2012, and named partners Doug Follette and Brenda Stanfield — did not consider McKinney an employee of Piecemakers.
“She was taken in as a family member, on spiritual principles, on biblical principles. She had nowhere else to go and no one to help her,” the attorney said. “They paid for all her living expenses, took her off the street and gave her a home, a bed, food and resources.”
But in a verdict issued in August 2022, a jury found otherwise. It determined McKinney was owed $596,983 for economic loss and awarded another $1.74 million for past and future pain and suffering.
For outrageous conduct and infliction of emotional distress, Piecemakers was ordered to pay $1.29 million, while Follette and Stanfield were ordered to pay $516,320 and $36,880, respectively. McKinney was also granted attorney’s fees.
After the verdict, Piecemakers’ leadership filed an appeal in state court and, in June 2024, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would allow the group to reorganize but remain operational.
Courts: The religious group, battling Costa Mesa over need for event permits, contends God wants them to challenge law.
But on Jan. 29 — two days before the Costa Mesa country store was forced to close — a federal court judge converted the filing into a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which calls for a liquidation of a party’s assets. Piecemakers is fighting that redesignation as well, according to Donahue, who is no longer representing the organization.
Piecemakers is no stranger to legal battles — with county and city officials claiming code violations or a lack of mandatory inspections, former members seeking to have their home returned to them and a disgruntled man who claimed his mother had cut all ties with him while under the group’s influence, according to previous reporting in the Daily Pilot.
Former leader Kolasinski, who led the group until her death from natural causes at age 90, famously spent a week in jail in 2007 for operating the store’s tea room without a permit and resisting inspectors who came to examine the shop.
One supporter of Piecemakers, who pleaded the group’s case on social media ahead of the Jan. 31 store closure and asked for financial assistance, called the legal proceedings a betrayal.
“A welcoming refuge from daily stress is under attack. Will some abled people get the word out about this miscarriage of true justice?” Orange County resident Lenore Waring implored in a Jan. 21 YouTube video. “Perhaps even some of those who have contributed to the [Palisades and Eaton] fire victims will recognize this as a different kind of firestorm.”
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