Valerieanne Gagnon
[Address — Canada]
valerieanne.gagnon@gmail.com
1-450-450-0684
August 23, 2026
Cheran C. Ivery
City Attorney
City of Alexandria
301 King Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
Re: Renewed and Urgent Request — Withdrawal of Arrest Warrant and Access to APS File W023408-050124
Dear Ms. Ivery,
I write as a Canadian citizen, from Canada, to renew and urgently escalate the unresolved requests first set out in my letter dated June 27, 2025, addressed to your predecessor, then-City Attorney Joanna Anderson Cordell. That letter received no substantive response. This is my third and final documented attempt to resolve these matters through direct correspondence before I am compelled to pursue formal complaints.
I am requesting, in the plainest possible terms:
1. The immediate withdrawal of the outstanding arrest warrant against me and the closure of the associated criminal matter; and
2. Full and unredacted access to the Adult Protective Services file bearing case number W023408-050124.
1. BACKGROUND AND PRIOR CORRESPONDENCE
In June 2025, I wrote to then-City Attorney Cordell. That letter explained that I am the only child of two elderly parents — Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon and Gaetane Gagnon — who resided at Bulfinch Square in Alexandria, Virginia. It explained that I had been excluded from my parents’ lives, their care, and ultimately their deaths, in part because an outstanding arrest warrant prevented me from entering the United States.
My flight to Canada was not voluntary abandonment of my parents. It was the direct result of an arrest — a criminal process that I have consistently maintained was initiated not to protect anyone, but to silence me and to remove me from a situation in which I was the primary witness to the financial and personal exploitation of my parents.
My June 27, 2025 letter sought two things: relief from the warrant, so that I could travel to the United States and attend to my dying mother; and access to the APS records in case no. W023408-050124, which I had reason to believe contained findings, allegations, or characterizations that had been used against me without my knowledge or participation.
That letter was met with silence. My mother was unreachable. I could not cross the border.
2. DOCUMENTED TIMELINE OF ATTEMPTS TO LIFT THE WARRANT
Attempt 1: Prior to June 2025, I retained Attorney Olivier Morin, a criminal attorney in Quebec, Canada, who reviewed the matter and provided a legal opinion that the arrest warrant, having been issued on a complaint by a complainant who has since died, is legally void and unenforceable. On the strength of that opinion, I retained Patrick N. Anderson & Associates, a law firm in Alexandria, Virginia, at a cost of US $4,000, to pursue the withdrawal of the warrant through local counsel. That effort was not resolved in my favour.
Attempt 2: On June 27, 2025, I made a personal and direct plea to then-City Attorney Cordell, explaining the human reality of my situation: that my mother was dying, that I could not reach her because of this warrant, and that I was asking for an act of basic institutional humanity. That plea received no response. Nineteen days later, on July 16, 2025, my mother, Gaetane Gagnon, died. She died alone, without her daughter present.
Attempt 3: This letter, dated August 23, 2026, addressed to you, Cheran C. Ivery, as the current City Attorney. This is my third and final formal demand. Both of my parents are now deceased. The warrant continues to stand.
3. REQUEST FOR WITHDRAWAL OF ARREST WARRANT AND CLOSURE OF CASE
The original criminal process against me was initiated by a complainant who has since died. In December 2023, Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon died. The warrant that issued from that complaint — or from a process in which he was the named complainant or primary interested party — cannot survive his death in any meaningful legal or moral sense. A dead man cannot prosecute. A complaint lodged to protect a vulnerable adult no longer exists when that adult is dead, and when the only child of that adult is the one being kept from grieving, from settling estates, and from re-entering the country of her parents’ residence.
The two decisive tragedies since my June 2025 letter are:
(a) The death of Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon (December 2023) — my father, the person whose welfare was ostensibly at the center of the original complaint. His death extinguishes the complaint in both practical and legal terms. There is no complainant. There is no living victim. There is no ongoing protective purpose that could justify the continued maintenance of a warrant against his only child.
(b) The death of Gaetane Gagnon (July 16, 2025) — my mother, who died without her daughter present because the warrant prevented my entry into the United States. This is not an abstraction. This is a documented, preventable human tragedy that occurred in the gap between my June 27, 2025 plea and the silence of this office.
4. REQUEST FOR FULL ACCESS TO APS FILE W023408-050124
I am requesting full and unredacted access to the Adult Protective Services file in case no. W023408-050124, handled by Darleen Canaday. I have reason to believe this file contains allegations, characterizations, and findings that were generated — at least in part — through the participation of individuals who had a financial and personal interest in my exclusion from my parents’ lives. I have never been permitted to see, respond to, or contest any of the contents of this file.
I am requesting that your office:
1. Direct that the complete APS file for case no. W023408-050124 (handled by Darleen Canaday) be produced to me without further delay;
2. Confirm that any prior FOIA denials are withdrawn, or explain in detail the precise legal basis, with citations, for any continued refusal; and
3. Ensure that no portion of the file is destroyed, altered, or withheld in a manner that would compromise its evidentiary value or obscure patterns of decision-making relevant to my case.
5. SYSTEMIC CONTEXT: PATTERNS OF COLLUSION AND CRUELTY IN ALEXANDRIA
My situation cannot be understood in isolation. The handling of my parents’ affairs in Alexandria, including at Bulfinch Square, fits a broader pattern in which vulnerable seniors and their families are drawn into networks of lawyers, financial actors, and local institutions whose combined actions result in the effective breaking, framing, and disinheriting of those who resist. In this pattern, criminal processes, protective services, and civil instruments such as conservatorships are not always used to defend the vulnerable, but sometimes to silence, isolate, and dispossess them and their closest advocates.
From my vantage point as the only child of parents who died in this system’s shadow, the Old Town Bulfinch Square area has not functioned as a center of civic integrity. It feels like a tightly woven network of collusion, where legal and civic institutions have been deployed selectively — against those who ask inconvenient questions, and in favour of those with the resources and the relationships to demand silence.
I recognize that these are serious allegations, and I do not make them lightly. I am not asking you to accept them as proven facts in this letter. I am asking you to recognize that, at a minimum, the City of Alexandria has an obligation not to allow its prosecutorial and protective powers to be used as unquestioned extensions of private interests. The combination of a lingering arrest warrant, sealed APS records, and the complete exclusion of the only child from the bedside and the estate table cannot be reconciled with any credible commitment to fairness.
6. SPECIFIC RELIEF SOUGHT AND TIMELINE FOR RESPONSE
This letter is, in every sense, a renewed and urgent request following the unanswered June 27, 2025 correspondence to former City Attorney Cordell. That letter asked, expressly, that the warrant be lifted so that I could care for my dying mother. It was ignored. Exactly one month later, on July 16, 2025, my mother, Gaetane Gagnon, died alone, nineteen (19) days after my unanswered plea. The cost of inaction to date has been immense: my father and mother are dead; my mother died without her daughter present because the warrant was left in place; I remain cut off from the United States and from the possibility of putting my parents’ affairs in order; and the narrative constructed about me by others continues to stand unchallenged in official files I am not allowed to see. Three formal, documented attempts — the first initiated on the strength of Attorney Olivier Morin’s legal opinion and pursued through retained Alexandria counsel at a cost of US $4,000, the second through my personal June 27, 2025 appeal, and the third this letter — have either been ignored or affirmatively refused.
In light of the above, I respectfully request that your office provide the following, in writing, within thirty (30) days of your receipt of this letter:
1. Written acknowledgment of receipt of this letter, confirming the date on which it was received.
2. A clear decision as to whether the City will move to withdraw the outstanding arrest warrant and close the associated case, together with a concise explanation of the legal basis for that decision.
3. A clear decision as to whether the APS file in case no. W023408-050124 will be produced in full, and if not, a detailed explanation citing the specific statutory provisions relied upon to justify ongoing withholding.
4. Identification of a point of contact in your office with whom I, or counsel acting on my behalf, may correspond to clarify any factual or legal issues that remain in dispute.
These are not abstract requests. They go to the heart of whether the institutions of Alexandria serve the public or a smaller, more insular network of interests. They go to whether my parents’ story, and mine, will remain one more example of people framed, broken, and disinherited in a city that has allowed systemic cruelty to run unchecked, or whether some measure of accountability and truth-telling is still possible.
Please direct your written response and any document production to me at the mailing address and email address listed above. Because I reside in Canada, I ask that electronic copies be provided wherever possible.
I expect your office’s acknowledgment and substantive response within thirty (30) days. If this third and final documented attempt is met with further silence or refusal, I will proceed accordingly: (1) by submitting a formal complaint to the Virginia State Bar against you, Ms. Cheran C. Ivery, for professional misconduct in maintaining and refusing to rectify a legally void warrant; (2) by lodging a complaint with the Virginia FOIA Advisory Council regarding the repeated denial of access to the APS file in case no. W023408-050124; (3) by filing a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning the use of this warrant as a tool of exclusion and cruelty; and (4) by publicly documenting the full timeline of events, including the City Attorney’s pattern of obstruction, so that the record of what was done to my family cannot be buried. Those steps will not be taken lightly, but after three unresolved attempts, including one through paid legal counsel and one unanswered personal plea, they will be necessary.
My primary witness in this matter is Attorney Olivier Morin, criminal attorney in Quebec, Canada, who is available to provide his legal opinion and testimony regarding the invalidity of the warrant upon the death of the complainant. I remain reachable at the contact information listed above: email at valerieanne.gagnon@gmail.com or telephone at 1-450-450-0684. I ask that, before I am forced to pursue formal complaints, your office reckon with the stark moral reality that a mother died alone because this office refused to act — twice. This is my third and final request before those complaints are filed.
Respectfully submitted,
Valerieanne Gagnon
Canadian Citizen
Only Child of Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon and Gaetane Gagnon
valerieanne.gagnon@gmail.com
1-450-450-0684
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