The bankruptcy trustee arrived — with a locksmith — around noon on Friday, Jan. 31.
Upstairs, an heirloom teddy bear-making class was in session. Downstairs, budding quilters sewed. And in the tearoom, customers sipped homemade soups and nibbled fresh sandwiches and salads.
You have an hour to vacate the premises, folks inside the Piecemakers Country Store were told. Everybody out.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but panic ensued nonetheless.
Not so long ago, Piecemakers’ spiritual leader Marie Kolasinski waged a righteous (and salty-tongued) holy war against county health inspectors who dared intrude on the tearoom’s kitchen. It was government tyranny! She went to jail, at age 85, for her defiance. What eruption of curses would Kolasinski conjure now, were she still alive to see this?
The Piecemakers — a chaste Christian fellowship to those on the inside, quirky cult to those on the outside — had lost, and lost big.
‘Cult’
Michelle McKinney, a former member who had broken ranks, sued Piecemakers and two of its leaders in 2018, charging them with violating minimum wage, overtime and other labor laws, as well as with dependent adult abuse, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of fiduciary duty.
McKinney, who had “mental limitations that restricted her ability to carry out normal activities or to protect her rights,” worked at the store 12 hours a day, six days a week, and was never paid anything more than an “allowance” of $10 a week, her suit said.
Among the other allegations in the lawsuit:
She never saw the food stamps that were taken out in her name. She was denied any interest in the group’s valuable real estate assets. She was required to maintain a rigorous schedule that regulated every aspect of her life, including when, where and what she ate and how many showers she was allowed to take. She was subjected to “constant, belittling criticism,” including about her table manners and where she chose to leave her books. McKinney’s daughter was separated from her and “given a sort of surrogate ‘mother.’” When the girl hit the turbulent wall of adolescence, she was forced to leave. Showing the extent of the Piecemakers brainwashing, the suit said, McKinney stayed while her daughter went to live with her stepfather.
“For more than 30 years, Piecemakers has been a cult operating in the midst of suburban Orange County,” the suit said. “Its leaders, including the now-deceased Marie Kolasinski, have believed themselves to be above the law. And while its leaders may make certain claims to holiness, the cult’s main aims are commercial — it runs several businesses, using its members as a source of free labor.”
When McKinney finally found the courage to leave in 2017, she didn’t have a penny to her name, the suit said. She couldn’t draw Social Security because Piecemakers never reported earnings to the federal government or contributed to Social Security on her behalf.
The case went to the jury in August 2022 and McKinney — a Judas or Erin Brockovich in this story, depending on one’s vantage point — prevailed.
“Was Michelle McKinney paid less than the minimum wage by Piecemakers for some or all hours worked?” The jury answered, “Yes.”
“Was Michelle McKinney paid at a rate lower than the legal overtime compensation rate for any overtime hours that she worked for Piecemakers?” The jury answered, “Yes.”
“Was Michelle McKinney a dependent adult at the time of the conduct?” “Did Piecemakers…take, appropriate, or retain Michelle McKinney’s property with the intent to defraud or by undue influence?” “Was Piecemakers…conduct outrageous?” “Did Piecemakers…intend to cause Michelle McKinney emotional distress?”
Yes, yes, yes, the jury answered. McKinney was owed more than $2.3 million, it decided. And that may be the Piecemakers’ undoing.
Kolasinski’s ‘Body of Christ’
More than 20 years ago, as the Piecemakers were warring with Costa Mesa in particular and government in general, they invited me to spend a day with them to see what they’re really about. It was 1997. Kolasinski was at the height of her powers.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world; no, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” she read from Matthew as dozens of fellow Piecemakers followed along. “I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers. … a man’s worst enemy will be the members of his own family….”
Tears glistened in Kolasinski’s hazel eyes. “He’s saying you will leave your natural family for my sake, and I will return to you a community — I will return it all,” she said, choking on her own emotion. “You are my children. We are related with a deeper bond than natural families — the bond of Christ. We have found the most precious thing that God can give us: a community. A secret buried deep in God’s hand, and only a few will find it, because to find it you must forsake the world, forsake everything.”
Kolasinski said she met Jesus Christ when she was asleep in the late 1960s. She felt him literally take her heart in his hands and massage it — “‘I’ll take your heart of stone and I’ll give you a heart of flesh,’” she said he told her — and it happened on three different nights.
She plunged into the born-again Christian movement sweeping California during the Summer of Love. She witnessed to whomever would listen, invited hippies to her tidy tract home where streets are named after birds, read the Bible aloud as they swam in her built-in pool. But it didn’t satisfy her spiritual hunger. Jesus Christ wasn’t the end of the journey, she decided, but the beginning. He wanted her to disciple herself to him and tread a more torturous path: to live as he did, to purify herself as he did, and ultimately, to meet God the Father as he did.
So he called her out of the world, she said. Out of the “false church,” out of hell, out of the grave where everyone is dead, and dragged her through the fire. “We have to suffer the way he suffered,” she told me. “We have to be crucified the way he was crucified. And then we’re resurrected the way he was resurrected. That’s what real Christianity is. I hadn’t seen it. You don’t hear it in the churches, because most people don’t want to go that way. Because it’s very painful. There is suffering. Because you have to give up your old life.”
People came — with broken hearts and broken marriages and broken psyches — seeking wholeness, perfect love, a better way. Kolasinski opened up her Swan Drive home to them. So did her neighbor Anne Sorensen. Dozens of core members came to live communally in a handful of Costa Mesa tract homes, sharing meals, sharing chores, sharing the struggle. It meant shedding family ties, jobs, possessions, friends. Sex was a distraction; some men underwent vasectomies. Only with strict adherence to these rules could they become Christ, she said.
The women ran the Piecemakers Country Store and tearoom on Adams Avenue, where thousands took classes in quilting, sewing, needlework and doll-making, enjoying home-baked goodies at the breaks. The men did carpentry and construction and were in high demand. But when the county health department insisted the Piecemakers needed a permit to run the tearoom and said it had to be inspected — a basic function of local government meant to protect the public — Kolasinski refused to let them in. She called inspectors “rapists,” “Martian reptiles” and “Gestapo whores;” two sued for libel, settling for $10,000 each.
When the city of Costa Mesa cracked down on unpermitted craft fairs and musical performances in the Piecemakers parking lot, Kolasinski and co. paraded into an arraignment carrying banners and singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
The laws of God supersede the laws of man, she insisted. “We’re a different creation. He hand-picked us as a first fruit in the Resurrection. God has set us up purposefully as a shining light in a dark world. We are representatives of the one true God on the Earth — and anybody who hates us hates God. It’s that simple,” she told me back then.
Kolasinski was sentenced to 10 days in jail for the health inspection debacle. It was 2007, and her heart was touched by the prisoners and their plights. She ministered to them, welcomed them into the fellowship, sent them money — hundreds of thousands of dollars, as it turned out. When the Great Recession hit the following year, things got so tough that the Piecemakers declared bankruptcy.
Kolasinski died in 2012 at age 90. The Piecemakers fellowship has continued, smaller and more quietly perhaps: The Country Store was open during COVID, flouting the wisdom at the time, but the tearoom has its permit, earning a passing grade from county health inspectors on Dec. 17.
Betrayed
The Piecemakers feel deeply betrayed. They opened their homes and hearts to McKinney and her daughter when they had nowhere else to go, members said. Piecemakers paid for their housing, food, medical care. McKinney came and went over the years, but was always welcomed back. She was never asked to do more than anyone else: None of them gets a salary. They share everything equally. That’s how their fellowship works.
In court, the Piecemakers denied all of McKinney’s allegations. After the jury sided with McKinney anyway, the Piecemakers filed an appeal. They also filed for bankruptcy in federal court, pegging its current debt to McKinney at $4.5 million.
The amount was unfathomable, but their plan was to reorganize and start paying off the debt, members said. A GoFundMe with a $5 million goal raised some $15,000. They’d start a $250 monthly membership club for crafters. But those plans weren’t given the time of day in bankruptcy court, they said. The case was converted from Chapter 11 — reorganization — to Chapter 7 — liquidation — just two days before the trustee booted them out and the locksmith changed the locks Jan. 31.
“This was crooked from the get-go,” long-time member Jean Moller said, standing outside the locked Country Store on Wednesday.
“The minute they said the word ‘cult,’ the judge should have declared for a new jury,” said long-time member Joanna Nelson.
Some 60 people massed in front of the store with them, sharing their dismay with one another and a local videographer. Heartbreaking, they called it. An injustice. Pure evil. A failure of the legal system. Jury-rigging. Several wore signs around their necks: “Generosity Should Not Be Punished.” “Good Samaritans Do Not Deserve Bankruptcy.” Tears flowed as loyal customers testified about how Piecemakers cared for them when they were ill, welcomed them when they were lonely, expecting nothing in return. This place is far, far more than a building or a store, they said. It’s an extended family.
“There’s no place like it in the whole world,” said Kelly Craft-Abram, who has taught there. “The things that are done here are dying arts.”
Long-time customer Lenore Waring rejected the “cult” language. She is not a Piecemaker and no one ever tried to make her one. “They do not proselytize, not one word,” she said. “Instead, they practice the teachings of Jesus Christ. They show their dedication in their actions. They maintain a business built on Jesus’ words.” Waring has recorded a tearful video begging people to support this one-of-a-kind refuge.
Much of McKinney’s case, though, seems to be garden variety labor law: minimum wage, overtime pay, meal breaks. Piecemakers might not consider themselves a regular business beholden to labor law, but the government is inclined to disagree: Registered nonprofits such as the Salvation Army and Goodwill claim to do the Lord’s work, too, but the government long ago concluded they must pay earthly wages to their workers.
Piecemakers’ attorneys have contested the bankruptcy court’s decision to liquidate Piecemakers assets, and members pray for its reversal. With everything locked up, they can’t make a living. They fear for the fate of their homes. Will those be seized next?
“It would be heartbreaking to lose all this,” said Jaimee Gerard, the teddy bear teacher. “Someone needs to do something.”