Fire company haunted by a blaze - and the man who stole their money

The men and women of the New Sharon Volunteer Fire Company in Gloucester County still recall the shock they felt that frozen night in December 2008.

Frank Ellis, 70, the company's secretary, was home watching television when his emergency beeper flashed: "Fire at the New Sharon firehouse."

"It can't be," he thought.

Volunteer Demetrios "Tike" Sypsomos, 59, lives across the street from the redbrick station house in Deptford, where he had worked, on and off, from age 16. The building was empty. Sypsomos was first on the scene.

The doorknob singed his hand. Inside he saw flames shooting up the engine-bay walls. The roof was tumbling onto the trucks and gear.

"It was a terrible, helpless feeling," Sypsomos said.

Other Deptford fire companies extinguished the blaze, but the house was ruined.

"We lost just about everything," Ellis said on a recent, bitter night as he, Sypsomos, and company president Robert Dessin aimed flashlights at the burned ceiling timbers and boarded windows of the gutted structure on Delsea Drive.

The blaze was just the beginning of the small-town fire company's ordeal. After vowing to rebuild, members learned they had been betrayed by one of their own.

His deception has left the nearly 100-year-old company homeless and broke, halved its squad of 19 volunteers, and tarnished its good name in the community.

An FBI investigation revealed that the company's treasurer, Charles Mancini, 45, of Wenonah, had robbed the company for years. First he took out an unauthorized $90,000 bank loan in the company's name. Then, after the fire, he stole $448,990 in insurance money.

To conceal his thievery, Mancini, who also was the company's president, gave members bogus bank statements, authorities said.

"We trusted him. That was our big mistake," Dessin said.

In September, Mancini pleaded guilty to fraud and embezzlement in federal court in Camden. He will be sentenced in March and faces 10 years in prison, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

The cause of the fire, which the Gloucester County fire marshal said had begun in an electrical closet, is listed as "undetermined."

The investigation is continuing, however, and "the fire is still considered suspicious," said Detective George Johnson, a Deptford police spokesman.

Since the blaze, the New Sharon company has answered calls in a small truck that was in the repair shop the day of the fire. It is parked at the Deptford Municipal Utilities Authority. Professional companies also answer calls in New Sharon.

The volunteers have a tall ladder to climb to rebuild their home.

As a private corporation, New Sharon must find its own money, and it needs $300,000 just to get the house operational, Dessin estimated.

The township does not fund the fire district, Mayor Paul Medany explained. "It's out of the municipality's hands," he said.

Repaying the stolen money is part of Mancini's plea agreement, but "although he's truly remorseful for his actions, he's in very bad financial circumstances," said his attorney, Rocco Cipparone.

The firefighters had begun to suspect financial impropriety and requested an audit not long before the blaze, but Mancini "adamantly denies any involvement in the fire," Cipparone said.

In the year since they learned the company had only a little more than $100 to its name, the nine remaining New Sharon volunteers have raised about $22,000 through fund-raisers and an insurance-theft bond.

But until recently, Dessin said, the FBI had ordered them not to discuss the criminal investigation. Rumors circulated, he said.

It's a small town, said Charles Messner, 75, a retired New Sharon volunteer. "People wanted answers of why it was taking them so long to rebuild."

"People here think we're all crooks," Ellis said.

Now that its members can talk, the squad is trying to get out word that it needs help.

"We're desperate," Dessin said.

The company has written Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and The Oprah Winfrey Show, asking for assistance.

"We haven't heard back," Dessin said, probably because they still have a bank lien against them from the loan Mancini took out, he said.

The fire company dates to 1912, when New Sharon was a pig-farming town, Ellis said.

Before the fire, professional Deptford firefighters manned the modest house in the day, and volunteers covered nights. The company went out about 300 times a year, mostly for stove and brush fires, medical calls, and car accidents, Ellis said.

The house was a "second home" to its volunteers, Dessin said. Members lounged there most nights. Weddings and funerals were held in the small hall and annual Hawaiian luaus and St. Patrick's socials.

The members spent a lot of time polishing their black-and-gold power wagon, a 1978 Ford pickup fitted with a 200-gallon water tank, which won prizes at fire department contests in Wildwood.

They could not rescue the wagon. A retired volunteer has it now and hopes to fix it up someday. Their fire engine also was lost.

Ellis has a photo of the company mascot, a teddy bear donated by a local child. It burned like a marshmallow.

Sypsomos, the company's vice president, has taken the ordeal the hardest, members said.

Tike's a big guy who gives his word with a handshake. He can see the burned house from his bedroom and tortures himself for trusting Mancini.

"I keep my wife up most nights," he said.

The company has a lawyer working to get the lien removed, which would help it apply for loans.

The members are planning a fund-raiser at a local Applebee's the day of Mancini's sentencing. The firefighters will have an opportunity to address Mancini in court.

"A lot of people have bad words for him and will talk about what they would like to do him if it were legal," Ellis said.