One of the things I noticed while living in Clackamas County, Oregon (for 32 years)* is that there are a lot of Liberal white women who are a plumb or two off of center. I could name any number of my acquaintances. One was named Sonya Fischer who proudly announced that she suffered from Trump Derangement Syndrome. Maybe THAT was why, just days later, she was appointed to an empty seat on the Clackamas County Commission.^
However, the bizarre behavior of Melissa Fireside, age 43, whom I never met, provides my readers with an even worse example of the kind of overly emotional, illogical Liberal women I am referring to. An acquaintance of mine when we lived in West Linn,* a suburb of Portland, recently characterized the disgraced & indicted former Clackamas County commissioner as follows:
“I met this crazy lady, Melissa Fireside, in 2018 as she protested me at a Lake Oswego^ school board meeting. She wanted trans books read to Kindergartners, I did not! Mr. 5:00 shadow Rob Wagner for State Senate (Democrat, currently president of the Oregon State Senate) was on the school board & was a sitting senator. He called his kooky progressive friends to come help shut me down, she was one of them. Then 2020 hit & Melissa became FULL of white guilt & clinged onto the BLM movement. She paired up with two local grifter organization called Response to Racism (RtR) and LO for Love. Melissa was used by RtR as a dumb pawn for being white, she appeared at all their meetings, on the street corners, & In their videos. RtR is a local cult of sad misfits who want to tear America down. I ALWAYS knew Melissa was a deeply troubled, wholy untrustworthy person. I was right.”
FLIGHT TO AVOID PROSECUTION
Former Clackamas County Commissioner Melissa Fireside is now believed to be on the run, possibly in Austria, after state prosecutors say she fled Oregon in October with her 9-year-old son just weeks before her trial on felony theft charges. According to court filings, prosecutors first learned she may have skipped the country when her son’s father called after discovering the boy had suddenly been pulled from school.
Fireside was previously released on the condition that she stay in Oregon while awaiting trial, but last month the Oregon Department of Justice filed a motion to revoke that release after learning she no longer lived at her Lake Oswego address. Investigators claim Fireside had a reservation to fly from Mexico to Amsterdam on October 28th using an Austrian passport. An ODOJ attorney wrote, while “there were no records of other recent border crossings for Fireside, according to the TSA contact and OWC, Fireside may have used a fake ID to cross into Mexico.” How Fireside got from Lexington, Oregon, where she had been living in recent months, to Mexico is unknown.
Court records show Fireside had full custody of her son, though the parents had a parenting agreement wherein the father had visitation time with his son. Although the ODOJ said the child is not believed to be in danger, in a statement, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield wrote the boy’s safety remains the State’s highest priority. His office is prosecuting Fireside due to the Clackamas County District Attorney’s conflict of interest in prosecuting a former fellow county elected official.
FINANCIAL ELDER ABUSE
In March, Fireside pleaded not guilty to eight felony charges including theft and forgery.^^ She stands accused of defrauding her mother’s 83-year-old boyfriend out of roughly $30,000. The records allege that Fireside drove her mother Gertrude Fireside to visit Arthur Petrone whom she had been dating for five years. He was residing at an assisted living facility in Lake Oswego. Petrone has since passed away. Petrone, who was retired from his job at Safeway, and lived on about $3,500 per month, had previously given his daughter power of attorney after “Petrone’s mental capacity started to diminish.”
According to court documents, in a series of calls on September 19, 2024, calls from Fireside’s phone placed to Rivermark Community Credit Union, a female voice Petrone identified as Fireside is heard “coaching and encouraging Petrone to answer security questions in an effort to reset Petrone’s online’s banking information.”
The calls were recorded by the credit union and provided to Lake Oswego Police, who investigated the case. “With Fireside’s assistance Petrone was able to provide sufficient information so that the credit union provided his login name and a temporary password,” police wrote in an affidavit filed with the court. Days later, on September 23rd, Petrone had three unusual transactions from his Rivermark account. Two withdrawals, totaling $1,000, went directly to Fireside. The third withdrawal of $29,000 went directly to State Representative April Dobson, also a Democrat, who represents another Clackamas County suburb, Happy Valley. In August, Dobson had loaned Fireside $29,000.
In late September, Petrone’s daughter, Lynn Roberts, reported her father was the victim of fraud. Oregon has a “financial abuse of the elderly” statute under which Fireside is being charged along with other statutes. If convicted, Fireside is facing prison time.
MEDIA PROTECTED DEMOCRAT CANDIDATE
Fireside, who was elected last November, was on the Clackamas County Commission for just a few weeks before she resigned in disgrace in March. “I think it’s really unfortunate that voters weren’t told this information,” Clackamas County Commissioner Ben West said. “Her home was raided a week before the election, and for whatever reasons, the voters were kept in the dark.”
NOTE: The Portland Area media covered for her because she is a Democrat. Had she been a Republican, this news would have been splashed all over local television and newspapers. As the allegations surfaced, West filed a motion to strip Fireside of her $114,796.84 a year county pay and benefits, prompting her to resign shortly thereafter.
“The county was in threat. She clearly is manipulative. She clearly is very intelligent, and those vulnerable in our communities, and the large amount of public dollars that we deal with were at risk,” West said. “So, we had to take bold action. It was unprecedented what we had to do, but I’m glad we did, as we continue to learn more about who she is, her behaviors, and to what extent she’ll go to participate in criminal behavior.”
GRANDMA WORRIES ABOUT HER GRANDSON
Fireside and her nine-year-old son Benicio moved from the Portland area to Lexington, Oregon, population 238, in eastern Oregon wheat country (Morrow County). According to Benicio’s grandmother, Mary Kay Bellamy, Fireside had asked to move into an abandoned schoolhouse Bellamy owns in Lexington. Bellamy and her husband live in a house located on the same property as the schoolhouse. “She had sold her house in Lake Oswego, and was living in hotels,” in the Portland area according to Bellamy.
Ms. Bellamy agreed to the arrangement, despite having had “problems” with Fireside in the past. Bellamy’s son, Michigan resident Cody Bellamy, is Benicio’s father. Mary Kay Bellamy said Fireside “wanted to get rid of Cody, but couldn’t,” contributing to the problems between the women. “She just isn’t truthful,” Ms. Bellamy said in a recent interview.
Ms. Bellamy said initially Fireside seemed content in her new rural surroundings. However, as summer ended and fall began, Fireside began making more frequent trips to the Portland area, totaling four such visits in two months, according to Bellamy. Fireside “didn’t like what her attorney wanted her to plead,” saying she could not go to prison as the mother of a young child. Bellamy said “one time mentioned she has dual citizenship, and that Austria didn’t have extradition” to the United States. Fireside is mistaken as Austria is party to an extradition treaty with the United States, according to federal records.
May Kay Bellamy, meanwhile, just wants her grandson back safely: “We love our grandson very much. We very much want him to come home.” The last time Bellamy saw Benicio, before Fireside took him wherever she took him, Benicio said, “See you Monday, grandma,” according to Bellamy. She has not seen her grandson since.
WOKE POLICIES KILLING PORTLAND SUBURBS: IMPORTING HOMELESS
The beautiful upscale suburb with 600 acres of parks, West Linn, Oregon, began to die about 10 years ago when enough arrogant, …
^At an attorney event in January 2017 which she hosted Fischer advised that 1) she was visiting a therapist 3X a week because the election & inauguration made her physically ill; and 2) she was in the finals to be appointed to an open seat on the Clackamas County Commission. Just days later, she was appointed! She ran unopposed in 2018 and was defeated in 2022. Six years she sat on the board, voting for ever more damaging “progressive” and woke programs to waste tax dollars. [I attended 7 or 8 commission meetings in 2019, 2020.]
*I practiced law in West Linn, a suburb adjacent to Lake Oswego, for 20 years so some of these fruitcakes were clients, some were neighbors, some were opposing counsels on my law cases and some were active with the local Democrat Party.
^^Aggravated Theft in the First Degree, Theft in the First Degree, Two counts of Identity Theft, Two counts of Computer Crime, Two counts of Forgery in the First Degree
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited. Follow me on X @DianeLGruber.
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