Government agencies at the state and city level in Alaska are investigating how they were duped by Joe Gerace.
Gerace is the former director of Anchorage’s health department, and he resigned last month hours before Alaska Public Media published an investigation showing that he used phony credentials to get the job.
But politicians in Anchorage weren’t the only people Gerace deceived.
Curtis Gilbert is an investigative reporter at American Public Media, and he was part of the team that broke the story.
Listen:
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The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Casey Grove: Curtis, who is investigating Joe Gerace right now?
Curtis Gilbert: First of all, you’ve got Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration. You know, the mayor’s office is looking into how Gerace’s lies about his time in the military, his education and his medical credentials seemingly went unchecked when Mayor Bronson nominated Gerace as health director last year. Then you’ve got the Anchorage Assembly. They want answers to a lot of those same questions. You’ve got the State Department of Health. They are also investigating Gerace right now, because there were false statements on his application for an EMT license a couple of years ago. And then there’s a fourth investigation that just wrapped up, and that one was from an entity called the Alaska State Defense Force.
Grove: Some people might not be familiar with the Alaska State Defense Force. What is that?
Gilbert: Yeah, it’s this volunteer organization of just about 200 people, and it helps out the National Guard during disasters. The Defense Force, it’s part of state government, but it’s not part of the U.S. military. And in spite of that, Gerace used his position in the Defense Force to pose as an officer in the Alaska National Guard. Now, after our story ran, the Defense Force launched an investigation into Gerace, and that is now complete. It found that Gerace misrepresented himself, both during the application process when he joined the Defense Force and during his time working there.
Grove: What kind of misrepresentations are we talking about?
Gilbert: Well, so Gerace joins the Alaska State Defense Force in 2020, and at that time he claimed to be a retired Army lieutenant colonel. Now the real story is that Gerace left the Army Reserve as an E4 specialist, and that’s a junior enlisted rank. It’s way below lieutenant colonel. Simon Brown is the commander of the Defense Force. And he told me that his organization didn’t have a process in place at the time to verify the information that was being submitted by applicants:
Simon Brown: I take full responsibility for that, because I am the commander. And I led my staff to believe that if someone was coming through the door to help out in a voluntary status for what we do, I had a lot of trust that you wouldn’t just make things up. And we have revamped that system.
Gilbert: Brown’s inquiry also found that Gerace wore an Army combat patch on the shoulder of his uniform, and that’s a no-no, because Gerace never actually served in combat. Gerace could have actually been court-martialed for these violations, even could have been in prison for them, but as it turns out, he ended up with what’s called an “other than honorable discharge” from the Alaska State Defense Force.
Grove: So, Curtis, you said there’s also an investigation from the state Health Department.
Gilbert: Yeah, and now that all goes back to Gerace’s EMT license. It’s suspended now because of this investigation that’s still ongoing. I got a copy of Joe Gerace’s license application from 2019, and it falsely stated that he had a master’s degree. That’s something similar to what he told the city of Anchorage, and also said that he had EMT licenses in five other states. Now, he did have licenses a long time ago in Washington and Virginia. But the application also said he had licenses in Nevada, New York and New Jersey. And as proof, it included a screenshot from the New Jersey license verification website. And here’s the kicker: It was for another guy who also happens to be named Joe Gerace. He’s with a fire department there in New Jersey. I called him up, and he, suffice it to say, he was not real happy, he said, to hear that some guy in Alaska appeared to be impersonating him.
Grove: Yeah, the story that we published about this at alaskapublic.org refers to the “New Jersey Gerace” and the “Alaska Joe Gerace.” So I understand you got in touch with the Alaska Joe Gerace. What did he have to say about all this?
Gilbert: Well, he’s trying to hold on to his EMT license, because he told me that he is in fact qualified to be an EMT. And as for all that false information on his application, he suggested that someone else might have put it there or filled it in for him. He was kind of nonspecific, and he wouldn’t say who he was saying did that. Still, Gerace did admit to me that he’s been embellishing his resume for years, and he says he’s lived in fear that he’d one day be exposed.
Joe Gerace: To people out there, you know, whoever, cheats on their resume, wherever, you know, it’s a ticking time bomb and I would recommend they don’t do it.
Grove: Interesting. Well, do we know what’s going to happen with this going forward?
Gilbert: Well, I think I would expect that we will hear something from the Bronson administration before too long, or at least that’s what Mayor Bronson’s spokesman told us. And so I expect we’ll be learning more about the investigation into the investigations of Joe Gerace.
Our related stories:
Anchorage Health Department director resigns amid investigation into fabricated resume
Anchorage Health Department director resigns amid investigation into fabricated resume
6 takeaways from our investigation of Anchorage health director Joe Gerace
Casey Grove is host of Alaska News Nightly, a general assignment reporter and an editor at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcgrove@alaskapublic.org. Read more about Caseyhere.
