This article has been difficult to write given the subject matter, and it has also been an expensive project due to the costs of acquiring public records requests necessary for piecing together the truth from the many rumors and other contrary statements that have been made about certain incidents. I assure you that despite the content, I have not written this article out of any morbid fascination but rather because the events I am discussing are a matter of public interest, as I believe they cast light on the true moral character of Newberg City Councilor Elise Yarnell Hollamon and those who will support her even after knowing the truth about these events.
This article will cover several controversies related to Newberg City Councilor Elise Yarnell Hollamon, who is currently running for Mayor in the November 2026 election.
I have in the past written editorials about Elise Yarnell Hollamon. These articles discussed her political affiliations as a member of the Indivisible chapter Progressive Yamhill, her nonprofit organization Community Wellness Collective (CWC) activities in the Newberg High School, the homeless shelter Harvest House which CWC received federal covid-19 relief American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for, her involvement in the funding of a homeless camp located near a private school, and how her private company Rallied Force was directly involved in the Newberg-Dundee School District budget crisis (in short, numerous contractors for the school were hired through Rallied Force without the knowledge or approval of former Superintendent Dr. Phillips, which was a factor contributing to the accounting budget problems the school district faced).
In full disclosure, Elise Hollamon has also in the past attempted to have the Yamhill County Sheriff Department arrest me in retaliation for my news articles about her. The Yamhill County District Attorney Office had to intervene, refusing to bring any charges against me after determining there was no evidence I committed the crimes Hollamon had accused me of.
Nevertheless I have written this article to be as objective as I can be, reporting the facts as best I can gather them and admitting when I do not have enough information to form a strong conclusion.
The rest of this article will spotlight information I have recently uncovered through public records requests I have made and other investigation into the activities of Elise Yarnell Hollamon over the past several years.
Let us first talk about the least controversial thing in my investigation before we head into the waters of the more difficult subject matter
Elise Yarnell Hollamon No Longer Works for Providence Hospital
Contrary to her public profiles that continue during this election to imply she still works in a senior managerial role at Providence Hospital, in actual fact Elise Yarnell Hollamon does not work for Providence anymore. This was confirmed by Gary Walker, Executive Director of Communication for Providence Oregon.
At the time of publication, Elise still represents on her public social media that she is employed at Providence, such as on her Facebook profile.
As she frequently uses social media to communicate with the public and especially for her political campaign for mayor, I believe Hollamom may be intentionally misrepresenting her employment to voters to hide her termination from Providence.
Elise Yarnell Hollamon Did Not Earn a Bachelor Degree From Eastern University Until 2025
You will also note that her Facebook profile displays her education as a graduate of Eastern University, Class of 2010. This statement has also been made elsewhere, such as in a March 30, 2022 Newberg Graphic article by Megan Stewart, “Hollamon a candidate for state representative“, where it is claimed that she had a political science degree,
However, according to Brian Minster, the Registar at Eastern University, Elise Yarnell Hollamon only earned her degree in 2025 — last year. She therefore was not a graduate of Eastern University at the time of the Newberg Graphic article in 2022, nor in 2010, as her Facebook profile presently indicates.
I asked Providence Hospital if Hollamon had misrepresented her educational background when applying for the senior managerial positions she previously held with them before her termination of employment, as her previous positions are ones that had educational requirements. This was Providence’s official response,
Elise Hollamon’s Nonprofit Paid Her Own Staffing Company Using Federal and State Grant Funds, Records Show
Based on the public records I have obtained, I have serious concerns that the City of Newberg knowingly administered federal and state grant funding to the Community Wellness Collective (CWC) under circumstances involving substantial conflicts of interest.
The records indicate that City Councilor Elise Hollamon, while simultaneously serving as Executive Director and Secretary of CWC, has used Rallied Force, a for-profit staffing company that Oregon business records identify as being owned by her, to employ personnel working for CWC. Federal grant funding from The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) provided through the City to support CWC staffing appears to have been transferred to Rallied Force to cover those personnel expenses, as well as The National Opioid Settlement grant funding.
As proof of these claims about Hollamon’s vested interests in these companies, you can download the filings of Rallied Force that, according to Oregon state records, show Elise Hollamon owned Rallied Force from 11-15-2022 to 02-16-2023 with a register number of 2040722-92. However, before she dissolved the original Rallied Force, she started a new company also named Rallied Force on 01-12-2023 that had a new register number of 2063786-97. Likewise you can see the related state filings for Community Wellness Collective (CWC) during this same time period that also list Hollamon.
- Community Wellness Collective Articles of Incorporation
- Community Wellness Collective Annual Filing (December 2022)
- Rallied Force #1 Articles of Incorporation (Nov 15, 2022)
- Rallied Force #1 Articles of Dissolution (Feb 16, 2023)
- Rallied Force #2 Articles of Incorporation (Jan 12, 2023)
To summarize, about a month before Hollamon dissolved Rallied Force #1, she started a second company, Rallied Force #2. This is in the exact same time frame when the City of Newberg was issuing checks into the care of Elise Hollamon to pay staff for Community Wellness Collective, but in reality, she was invoicing “Rallied Force” for the CWC staff payroll. Kristen Stoller appears to have been an accomplice on this scheme, as she is listed on the checks made by Community Wellness Collective for the employment of the CWC staff members, and Elise Hollamon was sending the invoices on Rallied Force stationary to Stoller, who on documents is claimed to be the President of Community Wellness Collective.
I will let you come to your own conclusions on what possible reason Hollamon had to start a second company with an identical name while the first company was still in operation.
(Editor note: Originally, because Rallied Force #1 was named ‘Rallied Force Limited Liability Corporation’ I naturally assumed it was also a LLC. However looking closer it appears to have issued shares at creation, and LLCs do not have shares. Looking closer at the entity type in the filing, it classifies itself as a ‘Domestic Business Corporation’, which probably means it was an S Corporation (as it is a single member Corp) and not actually registered as an LLC. I am unsure for why this bizarre setup was created but I have ideas. Rallied Force #2 was named ‘Rallied Force LLC’ and its business type registered as a Domestic Limited Liability Corporation, which if you did not know about the multiple filings the average person examining documents would assume is the same as Rallied Force #1. I can only speculate on this as I have no evidence, but if Rallied Force #2 continued using the bank accounts of Rallied Force #1, that could explain the motivation for the names, although it would probably be illegal)
However, it must be pointed out, in the same year Kristen Stoller is listed on financial documents as the President of CWC, Elise Hollamon is also representing herself in emails, grant funding documents and state registration documents as President of Community Wellness Collective, as well as its Secretary and Executive Director.
For example the agreement she signed with the City of Newberg to receive the federal ARPA funding lists Elise Hollamon as the President of CWC.
Elise Hollamon has been a Newberg City Councilor since October 1st, 2018.
According to state filings, such as this one, it appears Elise Hollamon and Kristen Stoller frequently swapped roles as Secretary and President of CWC. I’ll not speculate on what the reason for this swapping of the roles was meant to achieve, but I am sure any intelligent adult can take a guess. Regardless, Stoller is an accomplice to Hollamon on this, as her name is listed on the payroll checks and the invoices sent by Hollamon on behalf of Rallied Force.
That this was happening with federal and state awards without disclosures of the obvious conflicts of interests in the grant applications is not speculation. You can download the evidence here and read it for yourself.
- CWC ARPA Grant Application (2022)
- ARPA Award Agreement (April 2022)
- CWC ARPA Payments Statements and Checks (November 2022)
- National Opioid Grant Funding Application (Sept 11, 2023)
- City of Newberg Ledger of Payments Made to CWC
It is beyond contestation that the application for grant funding agreements with the City of Newberg did not disclose that CWC, which Hollamon is the Executive Director / President / Secretary of, was going to create an arrangement where the awarded money passed into Rallied Force. In state documents, Hollamon is listed as the sole owner of Rallied Force #1 and a member (owner) of in Rallied Force #2.
Concerning the federal ARPA grant award, this arrangement raises serious questions under 2 CFR §§ 200.112 and 200.318(c)(1), which govern conflict-of-interest disclosures and participation in federally funded procurement. In particular, federal regulations prohibit officers and employees of grant recipients and subrecipients from participating in the selection, award, or administration of federally funded contracts in which they have a disqualifying financial interest. These concerns exist independently of whether Rallied Force charged staffing placement fees or whether the employees performed legitimate work. That is to say, as a City Councilor Elise Hollamon could not use her position to encourage other City officials and employees to help her obtain the ARPA funding, nor could she as an administrator of CWC setup a scenario where payroll was actually handled by her own private company Rallied Force.
The records I reviewed also raise questions under ORS 244.040 and ORS 244.120 concerning the prohibited use of public office for private financial gain, and the disclosure and handling of conflicts of interest by Oregon public officials. This pertains to both the ARPA funding grant as well as the later National Opioid Settlement funding the City provided to CWC.
And again, former Newberg City Councilor Stephanie Findley is listed as one of the people to be paid in the Rallied Force invoices, and she was a participant in the secret ballot the Newberg City Council held on February 23, 2022 to award the ARPA contract to CWC in the first place. (There is a YouTube video of this entire meeting, just click the link).
Furthermore Hollamon and Findley did publicly vote for determining whether ARPA grant applicants to Newberg recipients would be partial or fully funded, which absolutely benefited their own company CWC’s grant request. This vote took place around 2:16:57 of the meeting. That in itself is a violation of 2 CFR §§ 200.318(c)(1) as Hollamon and Findley participated in deciding how much of their request for ARPA funds their nonprofit Community Wellness Collective would receive (whether the full amount they requested during the meeting or only partially the amount they requested for CWC). Hollamon attended the meeting remotely and Findley appeared in person. Will Worthey was City Manager at the time, with the rest of the City Council consisting of other Progressive Yamhill members (then Mayor Rick Rogers and Councilor Denise Bacon, and Molly Olson was the chair of the Budget Meeting) with the exception of Councilor Mike McBride.
In my public records request, I received numerous emails where Hollamon used her official City of Newberg email address to conduct business on behalf of Rallied Force and Community Wellness Collective, which includes the Rallied Force invoices she sent to Kristen Stoller to bill CWC. Here is an example,
These are the same people who CWC was receiving federal grant money to pay as staff for CWC — grants which were facilitated by the City of Newberg staff while, I must again point out, Elise Hollamon is a sitting Newberg City Councilor.
There are more invoices than this I was provided– inexplicably, for some reason the City staff attempted to redact / censor the logo of Rallied Force on some of the invoices. I will allow you the reader of this article to speculate on what the reasons behind this attempt by City staff to censor the name of the staffing agency on the invoices could be.
- Rallied Force invoices July 2023
- Community Wellness Collective Checks July 2022 (Kristen Stoller signing)
Here are some examples of CWC staff names appearing on Rallied Force invoices that also appear on the checks made for CWC payrolls that I was provided.
(Edit note: Originally, I thought these were all in July 2022, but the checks are in 2022 and the Rallied Force invoices are from 2023. The article has been corrected now.)
Matthew Bunn
Kristen Norton
Elizabeth Martinez
There are also a number of the checks the Newberg City staff have censored even though these were expressly provided by Elise Hollamon to the City of Newberg staff because they were paid with public grant funds the City was supervising the spending of. I’ll let you speculate on the reasons for why the City staff decided to censor the names on these checks from CWC signed by Kristen Stoller, which the City was provided by Elise Hollamon in her email. But I believe they should not have been redacted and the City is violating public records laws by trying to hide who received these checks and what the amounts are.
I believe it is worth noting that Stephanie Findley, who at the time was a Newberg City Councilor who had participated in the vote to award ARPA funding to CWC, is listed on a Rallied Force payroll invoice that Elise Hollamon sent to Kristen Stoller for CWC to pay during July 2023.
(Elise Hollamon also participated in the vote that awarded the ARPA funding to CWC, too. The voting to award the ARPA funding was done by secret ballot during a public meeting, which I have said in a previous article I believe was illegal.)
I believe the City of Newberg staff have purposely not provided me all documents of the Rallied Force invoices and CWC checks in their possession, as there are large month gaps in the documents I was provided that are during the period of time the City provided the grant awards. I also don’t have any records of recent funding the City may have provided or helped to provide to CWC. According to the IRS filing documents displayed on philanthropy.org, CWC reported receiving $1.4M in funding in 2024.
There is actually an email of Elise Hollamon dated May 2023 informing city staff she “moved our employees to a payroll and benefits service to provide a better full compensation package” without ever disclosing in this email that she actually owned Rallied Force, the “payroll and benefits service” in question,
However, as the records I previously provided demonstrate, the arrangement with Rallied Force had been going on before May 2023 and this was never disclosed in grant applications, including the subsequent National Opioid Grant the City procured for CWC after the ARPA award had been depleted.
Given the ease at which anyone can just look up who owns Rallied Force on the state website, and that Hollamon was sending invoices on behalf of Rallied Force to Kristen Stoller using her actual City of Newberg government email address, I find it unlikely that no one at the City was aware Hollamon owned Rallied Force.
This lack of transparency makes it more difficult for me to determine whether Stephanie Findley was paid as an employee of Rallied Force / CWC using federal grant funding facilitated by the City of Newberg while she was a City Councilor.
Here is an email that Elise Hollamon sent on January 16, 2024 to Newberg Mayor Bill Rosacker, City Manager Will Worthey and Yamhill County Commissioners seeking to recruit others to help her pressure YCAP into resuming their funding of her nonprofit CWC, asking them to “remove the red tape in government” for her.
It is these sorts of emails that I believe are evidence of conflict of interest law violations committed by Hollamon during her time as City Councilor for the benefit of her private charity and the private staffing agency she passes money from that charity into.
Under ORS 244.040(1), the issue is whether Hollamon used or attempted to use her official authority to obtain a financial advantage for these companies and therefore herself that would not otherwise have been available if not for her position as a City Councilor of Newberg. Given that Newberg City Manager Will Worthey spent considerable time and energy to help Hollamon obtain funding for CWC, and that he did in fact help her obtain funding using the City via National Opioid Settlement Fund, my conclusion is that a violation of conflict of interest law did occur.
The emails I received also show evidence of Newberg City Manager Will Worthey trying to help Elise Hollamon by pressuring Yamhill Community Action Partnership (YCAP) into resuming a business relationship with YCAP which had ended, one where the desired outcome was for YCAP to provide more funding to CWC and allow CWC to resume operational control over the Harvest House homeless shelter which YCAP owned. It is because of the operation of this homeless shelter that Hollamon desired the federal funding grants which the City of Newberg facilitated for her.
However, YCAP had ended their partnership with CWC in 2022, which meant CWC no longer had the Harvest House homeless shelter to run and presumably, no longer any need for the federal funding grant awards the City was to provide. Despite acknowledgement of this change in the situation, City Manager Will Worthey sent numerous emails trying to pressure YCAP Director into renewing the relationship so the City could justify continue to provide federal grant funding to CWC, the nonprofit Hollamon controlled and was using to pass money into her for-profit through the staffing arrangement scheme.
What follows are some of the communications I am referring to that I believe demonstrate violations of ORS 244.040(1) conflicts of interest laws occurring as part of the City of Newberg’s funding of Hollamon’s charity. After reading them you can decide if you think Hollamon is speaking to City Manager Will Worthey exclusively in her capacity as President of CWC, or if it’s also in her capacity as a City Councilor. I personally believe the two roles cannot be compartmentalized when she is emailing from her government email address and since the matter involves the City facilitating funding for her private company the City does not own or control.
I also reviewed a document you can download here, which is a lengthy letter that Hollamon emailed to several City officials, including Newberg City Manager Will Worthey, which was designed to paint YCAP as bad guys for refusing to fund CWC anymore, and which Hollamon sent during the time period she was trying to recruit City officials into helping her pressure YCAP into resuming the funding of CWC, as well as to help Hollamon find additional funding for CWC. Again, this document was sent by a City Councilor to other City officials as part of her efforts to secure funding for her nonprofit, which was designed to paint herself as a victim and YCAP as bad guys for refusing to fund her nonprofit.
And here is an email from Hollamon to Newberg Mayor Bill Rosacker and City Manager Will Worthey designed to convince them to help her organize a City Council work session where Newberg City Council, McMinnville City Council and Yamhill Board of Commissioners would discuss homeless programs, including those operated by CWC, which Hollamon runs and was soliciting funding for. This looks to me as more evidence of a violation of ORS 244.040(1) conflicts of interest laws, as she is asking for the City officials to organize a council meeting with other government officials in the area that ultimately would benefit her nonprofit, Community Wellness Collective.
And there is plenty of evidence of City officials doing exactly as Hollamon desired, taking actions that benefited her charity and which probably would not have happened if not for her position as a City Councilor. As an example, here is an email from Newberg City Manager Will Worthey trying to convince YCAP Exec. Director Alexandra Hendgen to provide funding to CWC after the YCAP partnership with CWC had ended. Here he asks YCAP to fund CWC’s “temporary location” that they operated a shelter program out of after YCAP terminated the partnership for Harvest House.
To which YCAP Exec. Director Alexandra Hendgen directly told Worthey that YCAP had ended their relationship with Elise Hollamon’s CWC because of problems encountered during an audit of CWC.
But did Will Worthey become concerned upon learning Hollamon’s charity had irregularities that YCAP had noticed and that is why they ended the partnership with CWC? Did that lead him to take pause and look to more closely scrutinize how Hollamon was operating CWC?
No, apparently not.
Instead Worthey maneuvered behind the scenes to secure National Opioid Settlement Grant funding to provide Hollamon’s charity with, which ultimately allowed these grant funds to also flow into Hollamon’s private company, Rallied Force, due to the undisclosed arrangement orchestrated with the assistance of Kristen Stoller and assumably, the rest of the employees of Community Wellness Collective / Rallied Force. Given the people involved, it seems everyone working for the shelter in Newberg was aware of this improper relationship between Rallied Force and CWC, as were City officials involved in the supervision of the funding of Hollamon’s charities.
This action also suggests enormous conflict of interests on the part of Will Worthey as City Manager, as it means there was no open bid process for the grant award and his motive in obtaining the National Opioid Grant was solely to fund a City Councilor’s nonprofit. And per the report dated November 2023 which Hollamon sent to Will Worthey after spending all of the grant funding that vaguely described how CWC spent the National Opioid money, I am skeptical on whether these services were a legitimate use of the fund given Hollamon’s admittance that not everyone attending the shelter received direct drug addiction services, and she claimed simply operating the shelter was itself a form of “prevention”, with no evidence provided for how precisely the shelter was preventing any of the people at the shelter from using opioids. Indeed, the report admits only those who attended the shelter more than a week were eligible for the addiction treatment services. Bafflingly, the report admits a drug addiction counselor aka “therapist” was only offered 4 nights a month and a physician and medical assistant 2 nights a month. According to her own report, the majority of the funding went to “8 peer support workers”, which is vague but a simple Google search suggests is a term for a non-professional non-medical specialist who uses their own “lived experience of mental health conditions, substance use disorders, or related life challenges to support others on a similar recovery journey“, which sounds incredibly dubious to me as a legitimate spending of the grant funding.
On that note, City Manager Will Worthey apparently penned an editorial he wanted another city employee, Alison Seiler, to send to the Newberg Graphic as a means of rebuttal to another editorial written by former Mayor Rick Rogers. The editorial attributed Will Worthey of “personally devising a method of using opioid settlement funds to keep the Community Wellness Collective shelter for the unhoused open this winter“.
I am particularly concerned that City of Newberg personnel appear to have been aware of the overlapping roles and financial interests involved, yet continued administering the funding without adequately addressing the apparent conflicts of interest and violations of federal laws. The emails further suggest that City employees actively intervened in efforts to secure or preserve additional funding for CWC through YCAP.
If City officials knowingly facilitated prohibited federal grant transactions, approved materially false grant representations, or concealed information required to be disclosed, the conduct could implicate federal criminal statutes, including 18 U.S.C. §§ 666, 1001, and 1343. These are matters that warrant investigation by the appropriate federal authorities. To that end, prior to the publication of this article I contacted the FBI and reported Elise Hollamon, Kristen Stoller and the City of Newberg for this scheme.
Furthermore, if the City possessed credible evidence of covered federal criminal violations or civil False Claims Act violations and failed to make the disclosures required by 2 CFR § 200.113, that failure could constitute an additional violation of federal grant requirements.
The City may also face substantial financial exposure under 2 CFR §§ 200.332, 200.339, and 200.346, including disallowance and recovery of federal grant expenditures and possible restrictions on future federal awards. That is to say, because the city staff were clearly aware about the Rallied Force pass-through entity due to all of the invoices in their possession, the City of Newberg is liable for repayment of the amount of federal money it received and gave to CWC. The City of Newberg could also be banned from receiving any federal grant awards in the future and termination of any existing grant award programs it is utilizing.
I have submitted a report to the FBI concerning these circumstances because I believe the evidence warrants independent investigation, and upon publication of this article I am also emailing it to the Inspector General Office of the Department of the Treasury.
I remain extremely disappointed that the City administration and elected officials apparently failed to recognize or adequately address these conflicts of interests in the operations of CWC and business dealings of Elise Hollamon. Regardless of whether criminal intent is ultimately established, the situation raises serious questions about the City’s oversight of public funds and its compliance with state and federal law.
I also want to point out that, according to all documentation I received from the City, CWC’s homeless programs were only serving about 30 people per day, yet IRS filings suggest it has been awarded over a million in regular annual funding. I have strong concerns about this, as that seems to be a particularly large amount of funding for a very small homeless program.
The residents of Newberg deserve transparent answers concerning how these grant awards were administered to companies owned by a sitting City Councilor, to know who in the City admin knew about the financial relationships involved, what disclosures were made and why the City allowed the arrangement to continue despite the obvious and clear conflicts of interest posed here.
Elise Hollamon Owns a Consulting Agency for Election Campaigns
I feel it is necessary to show yet another potential conflict of interest regarding Elise Hollamon — she runs a consulting agency that offers election campaigns consulting. So she is leveraging her experience in public office, while still in public office, to provide consultancy to other people running for public office.
The agency is named the Roosevelt Society, which I am actually quite baffled by, as there is a very well known group that does the same thing called the Roosevelt Institute. It seems rather audacious to use such a similar name as another extremely well known Democrat political consultancy organization. Regardless, it is clear she views her time in public office as something that is a revenue generation source.
Hollamon started the consulting firm in July 2025.
The Circumstances of the Death of Chris Hollamon, Per Police Investigation Report
This is the most difficult portion of this investigative report for me to write, but I feel it is necessary. Elise Yarnell Hollamon has made numerous statements regarding the death of her husband Chris Hollamon in January 2025, not only in her capacity as a City Councilor but also during her current campaign for Newberg Mayor. Couple this with the fact her company, Community Wellness Collective, has received tremendous amounts of public funding for the stated purpose of providing drug treatment care in Newberg, and the facts surrounding his death are, in my opinion, a matter of public interest.
Be advised, the information I provide in this section of the article discussing may be shocking and upsetting. You have been warned.
According to police report investigation into Chris Hollamon’s death, contrary to numerous statements Elise Yarnell Hollamon has made publicly implying otherwise, the Yamhill County medical examiner’s office determined that Mr. Hollamon died of diabetic ketoacidosis, not a drug overdose nor suicide. That is to say, he died of a lack of insulin.
The full police report is attached here.
That said, Chris Hollamon’s death was drug related, even if it was not an overdose.
At the time of his death, Elise Hollamon was on a vacation with Yamhill County Commissioner David Bubba King in Washington DC to attend President Trump’s Inauguration, for which Elise Hollamon had secured tickets for herself, David King and Kate Stokes, an employee of CWC and/or Rallied Force. I will let you speculate on the reasons for why two members of Progressive Yamhill, whose election campaigns are funded by members of the Yamhill County Democrats, wanted to attend the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump.
According to the emails I received regarding the arrangement of these tickets, Hollamon acquired the tickets for the inauguration ceremony for herself, David King and Kate Stokes through arrangement with Congresswoman Andrea Salinas (D-OR). Elise Hollamon at no time attempted to secure tickets for any of her family members nor Chris Hollamon her husband. According to the emails from her City of Newberg email inbox and David King’s Yamhill County email inbox, there were no meetings setup in advance, although after arriving in DC, Hollamon and King sought to have lunch meetings with Salinas and other Democrat officials. They were most interested in obtaining tours of various public buildings organized by staffers of Salinas’ office, and attempted unsuccessfully to secure a last minute White House tour, so I feel confident in saying the DC trip was a vacation and not a business trip.
Two days into the trip to DC, according to the police report, on January 21, 2025 Chris Hollamon’s deceased body was found by his mother in the Hollamon home, which was described in the police report as “filthy and very cluttered. There were no signs of forced entry into the residence“. Police found a marijuana pipe beneath his body, various other drug paraphernalia. Several Narcan kits were located in the bedroom and elsewhere in the home. According to a field test done on substances found in the home, the police determined Chris Hollamon was using cocaine laced with fentanyl inside the home. Chris Hollamon’s mother stated that Chris had suffered with addiction for many years.
According to the report, in Elise Hollamon’s own statements to police, she admitted that she knew that Chris had been using cocaine inside the home for at least a week prior to his death — which means prior to going to the trip to Washington DC with David King, she knew Chris Hollamon was using cocaine in their home.
According to the report, Hollamon also informed police where in the home they might be able to find the cocaine, indicating she was aware of the cocaine in the home before she left.
According to the report, Hollamon knew who in the Newberg community was selling cocaine to her husband, which she claimed was a neighbor named “Adam”.
According to the report, Newberg City Councilor Jeri Turgeson is the last known person to have seen Chris Hollamon alive. Turgeson is also an employee of Community Wellness Collective, and she works as a drug addiction counselor. She claims she saw Chris Hollamon the previous day and brought him, a diabetic using cocaine, McDonalds food and that she was aware he was using drugs. I will let you decide if bringing a diabetic on a cocaine bender fast food is the sort of a thing a responsible, intelligent drug addiction counselor would actually do.
There appears to have been no effort by Turgeson to contact any medical emergency services, in spite of the fact she claims Elise Hollamon sent her to the home to check up on Chris Hollamon, who Elise Hollamon admitted to police she was aware he was using cocaine in the home due to a “relapse”.
According to the report, Jeri Turgeson appeared at the home during the police’s investigation, claiming that Elise Hollamon had asked her to check in on Chris Hollamon again, and during this time police informed Turgeson that Chris Hollamon had died. The police then had Turgeson call Elise Hollamon to inform her about Chris’ death.
For those unaware, to some degree smoking marijuana, but especially using cocaine in any form, makes it more difficult for the body to absorb insulin, as use of these drugs causes the body to release epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine and cortisol. These hormones blunt insulin receptors, which is extremely dangerous for a diabetic person. It is therefore unquestionably a medical emergency for a diabetic person to be left alone using cocaine with no one to provide them with an emergency insulin shot and/or call EMT services. These are things that I would expect anyone who professionally works in drug addiction counseling and treatment to be aware about. There are studies about this.
- Differentiating Diabetic Ketoacidosis and Hyperglycemic Ketosis Due to Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome in Adults With Type 1 Diabetes
- The impact of marijuana use on glucose, insulin, and insulin resistance among US adults
- Diabetic Ketoacidosis Associated With Cocaine Use
Based on the report and my request for additional documents, there also appears to not have been an effort by Newberg police to have notified Child Protective Services about the presence of fentanyl laced cocaine in the Hollamon home described as “filthy and cluttered”, where a parent died, despite that the Hollamon’s shared the home with two young children.
Although it was mentioned in the police report, the City of Newberg has refused to provide me with officer body camera footage that would allow me to see precisely what it was that was said by Hollamon and Turgeson during their questioning by police. I have only the officer’s written report to go on for what transpired.
To say that I am deeply disturbed and alarmed by what I read in the police report is putting it lightly. I am actually quite angry.
Community Wellness Collective, which Elise Hollamon operates and Jeri Turgeson has for many years worked as a drug addiction counseling for, is the recipient of National Opiate Grant award funding, as I mentioned before. As well as ARPA money. This is tax payer money. Their grant proposals mention these drug addiction programs, the care they provide those who are suffering from drug addiction and so on. This is also listed on their public website. While the City of Newberg has in my opinion failed to provide me a full accounting of the money they have received, based on public filings it seems to be millions of tax payer dollars have been awarded to Community Wellness Collective over the years for homelessness and drug addiction treatment related services.
If the circumstances of the death of Chris Hollamon is indicative of the kind of care that CWC has been providing to those suffering from drug addictions in Newberg, I will let you decide for yourself.
Elise Hollamon has claimed numerous times in her political campaign speeches that she is ten years sober. This is a large part of her personal narrative as both a politician and operator of homeless shelter services in Newberg. I will let you come to your own conclusions about that statement in light of the evidence I have provided in this article concerning her activities and the death of her husband, Chris Hollamon.
Update 10/18/2026 – Chris Hollamon Worked for Elise Hollamon’s Companies
Since originally publishing this article, it has come to my attention Chris Hollamon was also employed by Rallied Force and Community Wellness Collective (which, interestingly enough, he implies are the same company), according to his LinkedIn profile. As well as a number of other drug addiction treatment service nonprofits.
His LinkedIn profile contradicts his mother’s claims in the police report that Chris Hollamon claimed to be depressed because he didn’t have work. According to his LinkedIn he was a director at Rallied Force and Community Wellness Collective.
I will let you form your own conclusions about this revelation.
Update 10/20/2026 – Newberg City Council Meeting Videos
At last night’s Newberg City Council meeting numerous public comments were made by Progressive Yamhill members about this article, trying to defend Elise Hollamon by insulting and slandering me. You can see the full video of that meeting here.
Maryl Kunkel, who is on the Community Wellness Collective’s advisor board, falsely claimed that I orchestrated death threats and harassment against Hollamon. The claims of death threats are unsupported — years ago when Elise Hollamon first made these allegations, I made public records requests for any police report Hollamon made about death threats when she claimed to the Graphic and Oregonian that she was receiving death threats. I was informed by the police dept there was no reports filed by Hollamon about any death threats.
All they have is slander and lies. This is their go to distraction to bury the truth.
Also Maryl Kunkel works with Hollamon as a campaign strategist, for example I possess emails of her coordinating with Hollamon, Yam. Co. Commissioner Bubba David King and Rep. Andrea Salinas in production of PR materials featuring King and Salinas. No doubt they think they can bury the truth with a bunch of lies to try to discredit me.
Example of one email, which are communications with aides working for Salinas,
I’ve embedded a video clip of Kunkel’s slanderous claims about me below.
Here is James Wolfer, one of the Progressive Yamhill School Board directors whose mismanagement of the school caused the budgeting crisis. Who as the police body camera footage and Oregon State Police investigation detail, was fired from the Grand Ronde police department after using excessive force on a suspect and then lying about what actually transpired. Yet somehow the Sherwood police department hired him, who apparently has no problem hiring crooked cops.
You can see the evidence and the police body camera footage for yourself.
Wolfer is blatantly lying when he claims Yamhill Co. Sheriff Deputies tried to arrest me for threatening Hollamon. Actually, they tried to arrest me because I recorded her admitting during a public meeting inside the Newberg High School that Progressive Yamhill is an extension of the Yamhill County Democrats campaign operations. They wanted to arrest me because they claimed I was “wire tapping” her. The Yamhill County District Attorney Office disagreed with the deputies and refused to bring any charges against me.
There is no evidence of death threats against Hollamon. I made public records requests for the reports and the Newberg Police Dept told me Hollamon had not filed any claims of death threats despite her claiming she was receiving death threats to the Newberg Graphic and the Oregonian. It was just a smear campaign designed to discredit my true and honest reporting of the facts. A lie they fabricated to build sympathy for Hollamon after I exposed the hundreds of people in the Progressive Yamhill Facebook Group for engaging in campaign finance law violations, which the Oregon Government Ethics Commission did nothing about — as usual, as they are all Governor appointees who only punish Republicans while protecting Democrats.
Here we have an uncomfortable but necessary video to spotlight from Elise Hollamon’s own father with a statement from Chris Hollamon’s mother.
All I will say regarding their statements is that while I sympathize with their loss, the harsh truth is that the circumstances of his death are necessary to discuss as it relates to the operations of Community Wellness Collective, which expressly received funding to prevent the very kind of death that Chris Hollamon experienced. His parents should be angry he was left alone instead of receiving the kind of treatment that the nonprofit was expressly being funded to provide to prevent the way he died! That is what is truly disgraceful here and that is what they ought to be angry about!
Chris Hollamon, per his own LinkedIn profile resume, worked for Community Wellness Collective and Rallied Force during the time in which the ARPA and National Opioid Settlement Grant Fund was provided to CWC and then passed into the FOR PROFIT company Rallied Force that Elise Hollamon is, per STATE FILINGS, an owner in. And none of these conflicts of interest were disclosed in the grant applications. They were concealed.
That is illegal. It’s blatantly illegal. It’s 100% a crime. They aren’t even denying it is a crime, that is why they are only trying to shame me for exposing the truth about the crime. They want to tone police me. They think exposing the truth is “unkind”. Yet I fail to see how that is going to help avoid jail sentences. If the truth is unkind, embarrassing or shameful to you, perhaps you should not have done these things to begin with?
The police report itself, written by what we must assume is a neutral party investigating the death, described the home as “filthy and very cluttered.” Those are not my words, as I was obviously not there. I published the police report so anyone can read it. The City of Newberg, in violation of public records law, has refused to provide me even a redacted version of the body camera footage and so I have only the written report to rely upon. The same report that says the drugs Elise Hollamon herself directed the officers to find in the home tested positive for cocaine and in the police’s opinion based on their experiences had fentanyl in it. According to the report, Hollamon herself admitted Chris used fent and that she KNEW who was selling the drugs to him!
Just because these people feel shame about the circumstances of Chris Hollamons’ death is no excuse to slander me as a means of trying to discredit the facts of what actually transpired, and which do in fact matter due to the tremendous amounts of public funding that Community Wellness Collective received to prevent the kind of death Chris Hollamon experienced. And the facts remain that per the police report, Elise Hollamon admitted she knew Chris had relapsed a week before she decided to go on a vacation to Washington DC, with another married man, Yamhill County Commissioner David Bubba King.
I ask you, what is more shameful? For Hollamon to use her husband’s death to garner sympathy to win elections so she can, I have no doubt, continue to engage in more fraud using public funding, or for myself as a journalist to expose the truth about that death so that the public can know what actually happened and how that death was preventable? What Elise Hollamon’s own complicity in that death actually was?
You can have sympathy for someone’s loss and STILL hold them accountable for the decisions they choose to make. One does not exclude the other. Enablement is NOT compassion! You do not get a free pass to commit fraud just because one of the people involved with that fraud died. People must be held accountable for the immoral wrong things they do. There can be no Justice without Truth.
All they can do is try to shame me with emotional arguments and misrepresentations of the facts. They cannot refute the facts directly, because the facts are what they are. They think their own failings can be hidden by trying to shame me for exposing the truth. These efforts will not work, because this is not about an election. This is about what is right and what is wrong. It is about the truth.
They clearly are trying to pressure other politicians into supporting and protecting Hollamon from the consequences of her crimes. That is not going to work because the bulk of the money was a federal grant. I have confidence that Justice will be served and I must also have faith the majority of the people of Newberg understand shooting the messenger doesn’t change who committed the crimes.
Here is Elise Hollamon accusing Newberg Mayor Bill Rosacker of having responsibility for my publication which he has absolutely nothing to do with. I don’t work for anyone. Neither Rosacker nor anyone else on Newberg City Council knew about my investigation. Most absurdly, Hollamon claims she would use her political influence to have my article removed “in five minutes”. I can assure you that will never ever happen. But I think this is insight into how she thinks, because the Progressive Yamhill Democrats coordinate everything together as a collective to create narratives. She cannot comprehend that I, a 100% independent investigator who isn’t even a member of the Republican Party, would do this investigation on my own out of my own pocket with no assistance from the Republicans in the area. But this is yet more proof of Hollamon’s disregard of Constitutionally protected First Amendment rights and the freedom of the press.
Update 10/20/2026 – Elise Hollamon’s Response + My Rebuttal
Lastly, Elise Hollamon made a public comment providing her “reasons” for why she incorporated two LLC companies named Rallied Force within months of the first one’s formation.
She claims that it was so she could change the tax election status to an S corporation, but this is a nonsensical claim given that Rallied Force #1 was formed on November 12, 2022 and Rallied Force #2 was formed on January 12, 2023. That is within the window of time for LLC tax election selection of the first company, and even if it was past the time frame, because she claimed it had generated no income all she had to do was file IRS Form 2553. So Hollamon’s claim makes no sense and therefore I think it is probably a lie, especially as Rallied Force #1 appears to have actually been an S Corp despite its registered name of “Rallied Force Limited Liability Corporation”, which is contrary to what Hollamon claimed.
Rallied Force #1 was also not “dissolved within 24 hours” as she claimed, but in fact it filed for dissolution on Feb 16, 2023 with a dissolution date of January 10, 2023, many months after it was formed in November 2022. So she back dated the dissolution about a month after the actual filing for dissolution date.
Hollamon also tried to claim that Rallied Force didn’t exist during the time Community Wellness Collective was receiving ARPA funding, saying it “didn’t exist at the time of the award”. This, again, is a lie. The Ledger the City of Newberg provided to me says CWC received a payment on November 10, 2022 in the amount of $34,854.40 — two days before she filed to incorporate Rallied Force #1. A payment to CWC for the operation of Harvest House was also made in December 22, 2022 in the amount of $32,301.25.
So Hollamon is once again caught in another lie. That she later created Rallied Force after the initial voting for the award in February 2022 and receiving large disbursements doesn’t mean she gets to later setup a private company to funnel the federal grant funds into. That’s not how the law works!
The ledger also clearly communicates the Rallied Force invoices she emailed to Kristen Stoller on April 12, 2023 using her City of Newberg email address is an invoice for payroll to Rallied Force, billing CWC for the staff working for CWC. As the ledger I received from the City of Newberg of all payments the City made to CWC clearly demonstrates, the City gave $53,914.96 to CWC just two weeks prior on March 29, 2023 which is described as “ARPA disbursement for staffing project 2.1“.
It must also be remembered that during the time the City of Newberg is dispersing ARPA money to CWC, Hollamon is sending emails out to City officials asking them to help her pressure YCAP into resuming their funding of CWC or else as they will have to shut down. It’s therefore not hard to understand the Rallied Force invoice Hollamon sent to Stoller must have been paid with ARPA money. This is what the records show.
And again, former Newberg City Councilor Stephanie Findley is listed as one of the people to be paid in the Rallied Force invoices, and she was a participant in the secret ballot the Newberg City Council held on February 23, 2022 to award the ARPA contract to CWC in the first place. (There is a YouTube video of this entire meeting, just click the link).
Furthermore Hollamon and Findley did publicly vote for determining whether ARPA grant applicants to Newberg recipients would be partial or fully funded, which absolutely benefited their own company CWC’s grant request. This vote took place around 2:16:57 of the meeting. That in itself is a violation of 2 CFR §§ 200.318(c)(1) as Hollamon and Findley participated in deciding how much of their request for ARPA funds their nonprofit Community Wellness Collective would receive (whether the full amount they requested during the meeting or only partially the amount they requested for CWC). Hollamon attended the meeting remotely and Findley appeared in person. Will Worthey was City Manager at the time, with the rest of the City council consisting of other Progressive Yamhill members (then Mayor Rick Rogers and Councilor Denise Bacon, and Molly Olson was the chair of the Budget Meeting) with the exception of Councilor Mike McBride.
I also want to be crystal clear that the Oregon Government Ethics Commission has zero authority to approve a federal grant award when 2 CFR §§ 200.112 and 200.318(c)(1) are applicable. It is against the law what Hollamon, Findley and Stoller did. It is against the law for the City of Newberg to have allowed this. It is fraud.
(As an aside, I originally mentioned the illegal nature of the secret ballot for choosing ARPA awards in the same article where I mentioned that I believe the Newberg Downtown Coalition is also an illegal charity, as they received ARPA funds to create a gift card program called “Berg Bucks” for a handful of businesses owned by influential Progressive Yamhill / Democrat members. )
So Holloman has lied. She has lied about everything because she committed fraud and is trying to avoid the consequences through yet more deception.
The reporting will continue. I cannot be intimidated.
