Olympian’s Career Destroyed After Walmart Self-Checkout Mishap

Former Olympian’s Life Derailed

Cana­di­an ath­lete Meag­gan Pet­ti­p­iece, 48, was once a cel­e­brat­ed soft­ball coach, but her life took an unex­pect­ed turn after a minor inci­dent at a Wal­mart self-checkout.

Pet­ti­p­iece was arrest­ed on March 28 in Indi­ana for theft, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, and pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled substance.

Forgotten Scans and Unexpected Consequences

The charges stemmed from Pet­ti­p­iece’s fail­ure to scan a cou­ple of items, includ­ing aspara­gus and ham, dur­ing a gro­cery haul at a Wal­mart self-checkout. 

Though the charges were lat­er dropped, the inci­dent had dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for Pet­ti­p­iece’s career and reputation.

A Promising Career Cut Short

Pet­ti­p­iece, who played soft­ball for Cana­da at the 2000 Syd­ney Games and was an alter­nate for the 2004 Olympic team, resigned from her posi­tion as head coach of the NCAA Divi­sion 1 soft­ball team at Val­paraiso Uni­ver­si­ty in Indi­ana short­ly after the incident.

“It’s been five months, a liv­ing night­mare. I lost my career, I lost my job, the life I was build­ing and it’s been real­ly dif­fi­cult,” Pet­ti­p­iece told the Nation­al Post.

Justice Delayed, but Not Denied

Despite the ini­tial charges, Pet­ti­p­iece’s lawyer even­tu­al­ly request­ed a dis­missal, and the court reviewed her account, proof of her assis­tan­t’s pre­scrip­tion, and char­ac­ter ref­er­ence let­ters before reach­ing a deci­sion to drop the charges on Sep­tem­ber 19.

How­ev­er, the dam­age to Pet­ti­p­iece’s career and rep­u­ta­tion had already been done.