In a long letter sent to several Northern California media outlets, the mayor of South Lake Tahoe said she attempted suicide because of the guilt and shame she felt over embezzling funds from a local Presbyterian church.
“This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do,” Mayor Tamara Wallace wrote in a letter. “I publicly acknowledge that I have received money from the Presbyterian Church over a long period.” October 6 letter Published in the Tahoe Daily Tribune. “And that’s why, on September 11, 2025, my birthday, I tried to end my life. I was so filled with guilt, shame, and grief that I had a mental health crisis that made suicide seem like the best solution.”
Wallace, who reportedly wrote the letter from a residential mental health facility she entered after a suicide attempt, said she had been stealing church funds for a long period of time.
While she claimed full responsibility for her actions and, according to her, handed over a list of account numbers and passwords to church officials so that “her actions could be more easily discovered,” the mayor said that while she was embezzling funds, she justified her actions by using the funds to help others, including her deceased son’s three children.
“But that does not free us from the earthly consequences of our actions,” Wallace wrote after saying she knew that Jesus Christ had forgiven her. “I have to pay back every cent and accept any punishment that comes to me.”
The mayor went on to share a litany of traumatic events in her life, from suffering abuse as a child and being disbelieved by her “alcoholic mother” to her son’s fatal fentanyl poisoning and her experience during the September 11 terrorist attack in Washington, D.C.
She later wrote that her eldest son narrowly survived a rare cancer and had to have his leg amputated after nine surgeries, that she was bedridden for 10 years with migraines and fevers caused by an autoimmune disorder, and that her adopted son’s behavior with special needs sometimes put her and her husband in personal danger.
The trauma list also included that her husband had nearly died three times in the past five years, and that, as a city council member, she had endured “countless death threats.”
“However, these things may be reasons, but not excuses, for my behavior,” Wallace wrote. “There is no excuse.”
said Sherri Juarez, South Lake Tahoe Public Information Officer sfget The mayor’s actions did not cause any “financial harm” to the city, although a spokesperson for the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office told the outlet that they were investigating the theft following the mayor’s confession.
“Here it is… Instead of being like many public officials and individuals who try to lie, hide and delay the consequences of something they did, I’m taking a different path. I’m telling the truth and admitting what I did,” Wallace wrote.
She ended her letter by thanking her husband, her three sons, and her daughter, who showed her tolerance despite the “pain, anger, and embarrassment.”