Then the phone rang. On the other end was Brenda Simms, a 25-year-old assistant at the center, who used what Decker remembers as a remarkably calm voice to deliver stunning news: Linda, she said, the State Police are here and they have a warrant. Is there a procedure you want me to follow?

Decker was speechless. At that instant, there was a thundering sound at her front door. There’s someone banging, she told Simms, I’ll have to call you back. "As soon as I opened the door, there was just this great rush of people," Decker recalls. They moved quickly into her house, going upstairs and downstairs and into her office. "I was in shock," Decker says. "Somebody suggested that I sit down in the living room, which I did. And then a nice, well-mannered man who was in camouflage kind of stuff said, ‘Ma’am we have a search warrant.’"

Back at the center, State Police investigators along with at least one FBI agent had gathered three of the center’s employees in its library. With them was client Chuck Colgan Jr., son of a state senator. The last to join them was Donna Flory, Decker’s 39-year-old daughter, who handles accounting for the center. She was on the phone in her upstairs office when the police arrived. A man in a dark baseball-style cap, a bulletproof vest and boots came up the stairs, she says, "flailing a piece of paper around, saying, ‘State Police, we have a warrant.’ ... I asked if he needed me. He said, ‘Yes, you need to get off the phone.’"

Flory, no relation to the late Dr. William E.S. Flory, the center’s namesake, was handed the warrant by State Police investigator Jonathan Watson, who had prepared it. "I saw in big, bold letters that absolutely terrified me, ‘embezzlement, misappropriation or misuse of funds,’" Flory says. "My immediate reaction was, ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’"

When agents realized Colgan was a client, they told him he could leave, which he did. Agents stayed all day, questioning employees and boxing up documents. They left Decker’s house around 6 p.m. and the center two hours later. Afterward, the center’s four employees went to Decker’s house, where they joined a few members of the center’s seven-member board of directors to recount the day’s events. The session broke up around 1 a.m.

Flory drove the few miles to her own home, where her husband, Don, was waiting. "At that point I was a basket case," she says. Her head was spinning with the images — of the police in body armor, her name on the warrant and that word: embezzlement.

"You get up and go to work, not expecting anything like this," she says, "and come home 20 hours later with your entire life turned upside-down."

The Allegations
The sealed affidavit that Watson used to obtain the warrant includes dozens of allegations against Decker and Flory spanning a period from mid-1997 to early 1999. They were based on information provided by two unnamed individuals who gave police copies of parts of the Flory Center ledger book and statements for the center’s two credit-card accounts.

Among the allegations: that Decker charged more than $2,700 to a Flory Center credit card during a business trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., in October 1997 for a meeting of the National Advisory Council of the Small Business Administration. As a member of that council, Decker was eligible for reimbursement from the SBA for those expenses, but she never reimbursed the center, the affidavit alleges. Same for a November 1998 SBA meeting in Seattle, during which Decker charged more than $2,300.

The affidavit also alleges that on a business trip to Savannah, Ga., in October 1998, Flory and Decker made "questionable charges" on Flory Center credit cards, shopping at specialty shops and buying a $268 tour package. Decker also was accused of spending $1,527.32 in December 1998 to send out 57 lemon pound cakes from Rowena’s Gourmet Foods in Norfolk. The affidavit states that only 13 of the gift cards sent with the cakes mentioned the center. The rest said, "Love, Linda," or "Merry Christmas! Santa Claus." According to the affidavit, that was using Flory Center money to buy personal gifts.

Eventually, the allegations faded away. Five months after the raid, Decker’s lawyer, Bernard Fagelson, got a call from Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert, who said neither woman would be charged. In September, the State Police returned 37 boxes of seized documents.

By then, though, the women had endured months of strain and the humiliation of stories in the local newspaper detailing the allegations. "Once it became public, you don’t even want to show your face anymore," Flory says. She regularly volunteered in the community — entertaining as Tootles the Clown for charity events and playing trumpet in the Northern Virginia Community Orchestra. After the stories, she says, "I totally withdrew from things that I took part in. I wasn’t really worried about the people that knew me well, but it’s those acquaintances. You wonder if they’re thinking less of you."

The Timing
It wasn’t just the accusations that upset the Flory Center and its supporters. It was the timing. The raids came in the midst of a dispute the center was having with the state’s Department of Business Assistance. The state, according to Decker and others, wanted more control over how small-business development centers operated — such as the selection of center directors, the timing of audits and the handling of federal grant applications. To exert control, the state laid out its requirements in agreements the centers had to sign before the state would distribute funding that was earmarked for small-business development. No signature, no money.

The Flory Center’s board didn’t want the state so involved in its affairs. Besides, the board reasoned, the money the state was handing out was mostly federal dollars. "We just felt that it was an extension of government bureaucracy," says Joseph France, the Flory board chairman.

When the raids came, suspicions immediately rose that the two were connected. "I assume that it was orchestrated to totally discredit Mrs. Decker, and with the ultimate intention of closing the center," says Sharron Baucom, a Flory board member and member of the Prince William Industrial Development Authority. Says State Sen. Charles Colgan, D-Manassas: "It’s hard to believe there wasn’t somebody pulling the strings. I have to think that they were tied together, but I can’t prove that."

Joshua N. Lief, deputy secretary of commerce and trade, who became involved in 1998 in an attempt to end the dispute, calls those allegations "ridiculous." As soon as he learned of the Flory Center allegations and search warrants, Lief says, he questioned people in his department to see if there was a link. "It was a strange coincidence, and I knew that would come up." He says he found no connection.

Read the affidavit, Lief suggests. The allegations came from someone who knew the center’s operations well — and there is no apparent link to any state employee.

Decker has no concrete evidence that the contract dispute and the raid are connected. But she is deeply suspicious. The raids, she says, "were solely staged to intimidate." She and her supporters are harshly critical of the State Police investigation. What about the thousands of dollars in SBA travel reimbursements that Decker supposedly pocketed instead of passing them along to the Flory Center? Flory says most expenses for those trips were paid directly by the SBA, so there was no reimbursement expected. And the travel costs that Decker could submit to the SBA were submitted, she says, though the reimbursement hasn’t yet been received.

"The SBA has never written me a check in my entire life, and that would have been a very easy thing for (the State Police) to check," Decker says. But "nobody checked anything — just alleged it. If I had done that, I guess that could qualify as something really bad, but I didn’t do it." The cakes? They were thank-you gifts to the center’s clients and supporters, she says.

France complains that police could have found what they needed in publicly available audits of the center. "The information was available," he says. "There was no reason in the world for the raid and the confiscation and the secrecy."

Baucom says the board gets quarterly financial statements from Decker "that account for every penny, every check that’s written. ... There’s nothing that goes on over there that we didn’t know about."

Why, Baucom and others ask, did the State Police send armed SWAT team-like agents to invade a farmhouse occupied by four women and a five-pound poodle named Josh? Chuck Colgan Jr. called the scene at the center that morning "unbelievable. You’d have thought it was a crack house. I’m not bashing the police, but I can’t believe they needed that kind of firepower," he says. "It seemed to me they were making a statement of some kind."

Not so, says Darrel Stilwell, director of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation for the State Police. "The case was handled like any other," he says. "The attorney general’s office came up with information and we came up with information that resulted in an affidavit for a search warrant," he says. Despite the descriptions by Decker, Flory, Colgan and others of agents in body armor and camouflage, Stilwell insists his agents were dressed in business suits.

There is no standard approach to serving warrants, he says. It depends on several factors, such as the location and the type of business and the potential risk to law-enforcement agents. Sometimes people will try to destroy evidence. "We try to put together a group of people that can handle whatever we run into," he says. "We do not go out there to mistreat people."

The Conflict
After the raids, negotiations between the Flory Center and the state struggled on. In early June, Decker, Baucom and France had a final unsuccessful meeting in Richmond with David Dickson, director of the state’s Department of Business Assistance, and deputy director John Waddell. Three weeks later, Robert Wilburn, director of the state small business development network, told Decker by letter that the Flory Center wouldn’t be reimbursed for its expenses and was effectively out of the state network.

In August the Flory Center board sued the state, seeking the $200,000 that the center had budgeted for its 1999 spending plan, which totaled $430,000. The suit claims that state officials had told Flory Center leaders to keep doing their work until the agreement was reached. But when no deal was struck, the state refused to reimburse the center.

France called the experience "very disturbing and very disappointing. I’ve always felt the Flory Center has been so successful." France is not alone in that assessment. Federal Small Business Administration regional director Charles Gaston called the center "the biggest producer within the network" of small business centers in Virginia. "They do a fantastic job," he says. In 1996, the state office named Decker its "Employee of the Year" — a misleading compliment, since Decker isn’t a state employee.

State officials, though, don’t want to talk about the center’s record. "All I’m saying is that they were offered the contract and they elected not to sign it," Waddell says.

The Flory Center is one of the most independent small-business centers in the state, which may be one reason for the conflict. It was founded in 1991 by the Prince William Industrial Development Authority as an independent, nonprofit corporation serving Prince William and Fauquier counties plus the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park. Its relationship with the state has always been an arm’s length "partnership." While other centers typically are hosted by a college or university, institutions accustomed to give and take with the state, the Flory Center is guided by its own board. It has enjoyed strong financial support from local governments and economic development groups — 70 percent of its funding from 1991 to 1998 was local, Baucom says. That’s reason enough for the state to back off, she says. "If it’s supposed to be a partnership, then why is the minority partner claiming control?"

Decker, though, believes the raid and the state’s hard line with the Flory Center were fueled in part by past confrontations she’s had with the state office.

In 1996, the General Assembly increased funding for the state’s small-business development program by $500,000. Decker expected some of that money to come to the Flory Center, because its localities had always put up more in matching funds. But Decker says she was told that she would have to raise even more local funds to get more from the state.

In frustration, Decker threw a bomb at the state office — in the form of a package of financial data on the state program dubbed "Unanswered Questions." Decker says she sent it to then-Gov. George Allen and his general counsel. She questioned how the state office was spending its money — asking, for example, why its 1995 budget showed $27,403 for a business analyst when, according to Decker, it didn’t have one.

Dickson says he was aware that Decker had disputes with his predecessors, but those are in the past. "The charge of retribution makes no sense," he says.

Not All Agree
Virginia officials see the statewide network of 24 centers as part of their effort to offer small-business counseling and to leverage federal dollars through matching grants. They want a certain uniformity in how each center operates. The SBA requires the state to provide "careful and constant oversight" of the program, Dickson said in a written response to questions from Virginia Business. "We are not a mere conduit for federal and state funds, but have well-documented management responsibilities," Dickson wrote.

But the Flory Center hasn’t been the only one unhappy with state oversight. Jerry Hughes, who directed the small-business development center at Longwood College for 10 years, says that since the program’s inception, the state has consistently underfunded the network of small-business centers. Then it interpreted the problems produced by that low funding as "a need for control from state offices. It’s a typical bureaucratic response."

Hughes says the state’s oversight began changing in 1996, when Virginia reorganized the old Department of Economic Development into the Economic Development Partnership and the new Department of Business Assistance. Hughes says the state began using the annual agreements as "a primary tool for exercising control." Hughes signed the agreements every year, even when he objected to some provisions. There wasn’t much choice –– his center needed the money. But the Flory Center was different. It had enough cash on hand to stay afloat for months while it challenged various provisions of the agreement.

Hughes left his post last January for a job in the private sector, in part out of frustration with the state. There are other center directors who share his view, he says.

But there are those who don’t. James Carroll, director of the center in Hampton Roads, has signed two of the state’s annual agreements so far and has had "no problems whatsoever." Having the state involved in matters such as hiring center directors makes sense to him. "The bottom line is, we have to work with the state director. I can’t understand why that’s an objection."

Those feelings are echoed at the small-business development center at George Mason University in Fairfax County. Says GMU Vice President Helen Ackerman: "As far as we’re concerned, the agreement is perfectly fine and doesn’t cause us any problems with our mission."

Epilogue
The Flory Center’s biggest worry these days is money. The Prince William Industrial Development Authority spent $100,000 this summer to keep the center going. And Flory says she and her mother combined have loaned the center $50,000 of their own money this year.

Since filing their lawsuit against the state last summer, Flory Center supporters have been confident they would eventually get the $200,000. But in December, they suffered a setback when Prince William Circuit Judge Barnard F. Jennings dismissed the suit on a technicality — he ruled that the center was a state contractor. And as a contractor, it was required by the Virginia Public Procurement Act to submit written notice of its plan to file a claim against the state, which it had not. The center is planning an appeal.

After cutting its ties to the Flory Center last summer, the state set up a new small-business development center in Manassas. Dickson says it can co-exist with the Flory Center. "It’s my understanding that the Flory Center is part of Prince William County’s overall economic development strategy," he says. "I’m all for it."

Decker says the center will make up the missing funds next year by asking for more money from the localities it serves. "Without the state aggravation ... it means that you can devote 100 percent of your effort to your local area," she says. In October, the center signed an agreement with Gaston at the federal SBA office in Richmond to continue working together.

In October, Decker and Flory filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for files on the allegations against them. The State Police denied that request, citing a state law that allows authorities to keep those kinds of records secret at their discretion. And Decker has written four letters to Gov. Jim Gilmore asking for help but has received no response, she says. She’s still shaken by the events, but isn’t planning to let the matter drop — personally or professionally.