Avondale official who called Tom Hanks a ‘pedo’ accused of kidnapping

Jeannette Garcia has a habit of making bad headlines.

In February, the far-right Avondale City Council member caught blowback for calling actor Tom Hanks a “pedo” on X, where she has 49,000 followers. Garcia later claimed she meant the Spanish translation for “fart” and not “pedophile,” but the city council ultimately voted to condemn the remark. In July, Garcia raised eyebrows by telling Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego to “tell your wife to stay home and watch your kids.”

Bad tweets are one thing, but now Garcia is facing a much more serious allegation. In a lawsuit filed in Maricopa County Superior Court on Nov. 14, the MAGA darling is accused of drunkenly propositioning a male coworker to have sex and, when he rebuffed her, briefly kidnapping his 14-year-old daughter.

The lawsuit was filed by two anonymous plaintiffs, identified only as Father John Doe — not quite as catchy as Father John Misty — and Minor Jane Doe. Neither Garcia nor Isaac Hernandez, the lawyer for the plaintiffs, responded to a request for comment from Phoenix New Times. Avondale spokesperson Pier Simeri said the city declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The events their complaint describes allegedly took place one year before the lawsuit was filed.

At the time, John Doe had been hired by Charlie Kirk’s right-wing political organization, Turning Point, to promote their preferred candidates in the 2024 election, the lawsuit states. Garcia, who was appointed to the Avondale City Council in October 2024, was also working for the organization and was Doe’s direct supervisor. Though neither Turning Point nor Garcia has responded to requests for comment, a Facebook post from July 2024 confirms that she was employed there. It’s unclear if she is still affiliated with the organization.

A week after the election, the lawsuit claims, Garcia and Doe were among several Turning Point employees celebrating Republican wins at a Goodyear restaurant. The complaint alleges that Garcia was drinking heavily.

“As the night progressed, Garcia began making remarks inviting and suggesting her interest in having sex or being intimate with Father Doe, which he repeatedly rebuffed,” the lawsuit reads. “At one point in the evening Garcia propositioned Father Doe, offering him employment with (Turning Point) if he agreed to have sex with her. As Garcia became more aggressive and explicit, presumably due to excessive consumption of alcohol, Father Doe eventually decided he could no longer tolerate Garcia’s harassment and inappropriate conduct and decided to leave the restaurant and go home.”

Doe claims he left the restaurant around 12:30 a.m. and arrived home roughly 45 minutes later. When he got there, he found that his daughter wasn’t home. He drove to the house of one of his daughter’s friends, with whom she’d spent part of the evening, but she wasn’t there either.

‘Panic and shock’

When he returned home a second time, he was met by deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. They told him his daughter was “safe” and with Garcia after she and two other people — including Turning Point employee Angela Rodin, who is also named as a defendant in the suit — picked her up. 

New Times has requested any sheriff’s office reports mentioning Garcia from that timeframe, but has not received any.

The complaint says Doe “openly and repeatedly questioned how or why his daughter would be with Garcia. His panic and shock was compounded by the fact he was aware Garcia and other individuals she was with had consumed excessive amounts of alcohol and were extremely intoxicated when he (Father Doe) left the restaurant.”

Doe says he was able to reach Garcia by phone at 2:20 a.m. to confirm his daughter was with her. The lawsuit says he “was understandably shocked with Garcia’s inexplicable decision to take his daughter from her home without his permission or consent, place her in a vehicle while (Garcia) was extremely intoxicated, along with two other unknown adults who were also likely intoxicated.” It also says that if Garcia was truly concerned for the girl’s well-being, she would have known that the girl’s grandparents lived just down the street.

Per the lawsuit, sheriff’s deputies first contacted the girl’s grandparents to let them know she was with Garcia. Doe wasn’t able to retrieve his daughter until around noon the next day, partly because Garcia allegedly wouldn’t answer his calls. He learned from his daughter that “Garcia told her that she (Garcia) was concerned for Minor Doe’s safety because Father Doe had been drinking, suggesting that Father Doe could become violent, and that he was on his way home.”

According to the complaint, the incident left the daughter with major trauma.

“She was terrified of leaving home and rarely left her room; she no longer wanted to interact socially with friends and family or participate in extracurricular activities; she no longer wanted to go to school; her grades began to suffer,” it reads.

The lawsuit also names Turning Point and Avondale as defendants, claiming they are vicariously liable for Garcia’s actions as her employers. Then-Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner is also a defendant due to the “complicit conduct of MCSO Deputies,” the lawsuit states. 

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The father-daughter duo is suing for false imprisonment/kidnapping, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress against Garcia and Rodin, as well as civil conspiracy against all those named in the suit. They accuse Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies of aiding and abetting the alleged kidnapping.

The defendants have yet to respond to the lawsuit in court.