ISSAQUAH HIGHLANDS — What began as a simple, innocuous phone notification this spring evolved quickly into a real estate mystery and multimillion-dollar legal dispute for Issaquah property owners accused of illegally chopping and stripping dozens of trees on public land.
Stumps and barren trunks jut into the sky where once stood a thick copse of Douglas fir, western red cedar, Sitka spruce, hemlocks and maples. The cut extends well into King County’s Grand Ridge Park. The thinning is so apparent, a new hole in the forest can be seen from Interstate 90. What remains is a much clearer line of sight between three mansions on the hill and the mountains to the south.
The people who own the properties are no secret. Four of them work in real estate and the fifth is running for public office on Mercer Island.
But who was hired to clear these decades-old trees and why the work cut so deeply into public property remains unclear. County officials don’t yet know and the property owners aren’t saying. One is, however, distancing herself from the cuttings entirely while another is defending the work.
Attorneys for King County filed a lawsuit on June 6 against all five property owners. The suit, filed in Superior Court of Washington for King County, cites millions of dollars in damages. For the company (or companies) behind the cuttings, county lawyers listed only pseudonyms.
The King County sheriff’s office is also investigating the case to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
Nearby homeowner Alex Brown alerted county officials to the cutting this spring. When one natural resources officer visited the scene, he said they told him it amounted to a “massacre” and the “most egregious vandalism” of this kind they’d ever seen.
The illegally cut and damaged trees leave behind serious and generational harm to a protected natural area, County Parks Director Warren Jimenez said in a statement. Not only did the property owners cut into large trees themselves, they cut into a sensitive and hazardous habitat, exposing the steep hillside and surrounding ecosystem to risk well into the future.
“This kind of damage undermines decades of public investment in environmental conservation and responsible land management, and we are committed to holding accountable those who violate the public’s trust and damage our shared natural resources,” Jimenez said.
While Brown and other neighbors expressed concern over the cuttings and their personal safety downhill, the defendants themselves have offered little information.
King County officials continue to investigate and attorneys are seeking a jury trial to determine the full extent of the damage.
Caught on camera
Brown moved into his rural Issaquah home about two years ago and especially loves the access to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. He’s an experienced thru-hiker and trail runner, and he hunts and fishes. He also keeps a trail camera in a small, sloped clearing about 75 yards behind his house to track wildlife. That area is a remote section of King County’s Grand Ridge Park.
Alerts pop up on Brown’s phone intermittently, letting him know the camera detected movement and sending him a single photo of the footage captured.
Sometimes he’ll see bears, coyotes, even mountain lions. He’s started a blog and contributes to a local YouTube channel to share the video clips and his musings.
In late March, Brown said he received a different type of photo: What appeared to be a fallen tree.
That’s funny, he thought. If a tree falls in the forest …
You know the saying.
The footage was no laughing matter, though. Brown watched as a large log, stripped of its branches, barreled down the steep hillside like a missile. It wedged itself under another, larger log just steps from the trail cam.
Brown, a journalist, followed the clues. From the log’s final resting place, he could see a path of destruction leading all the way up the steep slope, toward an expensive and private development off Issaquah’s Grand Ridge Drive. He and a fellow neighbor scrambled up the incline, through spider webs and brambles.
At the top they found more destruction than they anticipated.
Dozens of trees had been slashed and sawed. Some had been cut down entirely, others were stripped of their branches except for small tufts up high. Others still had been “topped,” or cut higher up the trunk.
“My jaw dropped,” Brown said.
In the background sat three mansions and manicured lawns.
Brown said he approached one of the property owners, Sam Cunningham, about the cuts and received apologies. He said Cunningham (who did not respond to a request for comment for this story) told him that another neighbor had hired a “licensed, bonded arborist” on behalf of the property owners.
This was a case of an arborist going rogue and exceeding their brief — they had specifically not been authorized to cut county park trees, Cunningham reportedly told Brown. The uphill neighbor asked Brown to allow those up top to take the lead on reporting the incident to the county.
But Brown and his neighbors contacted the county themselves.
Revisiting the site in June and climbing between cut logs, Brown examined the debris left behind. He remains highly skeptical that such widespread damage could have been an accident.
“You’d have to have so much skill and so much manpower to pull this off,” he said.
County sues
Investigating county officials spray-painted large, orange numbers on the trees and stumps cut on county property. One by one the numbers tick upward, tallying the damage.
In all, 72 trees were stripped of their limbs, 45 cut down, 18 topped and seven more damaged in some other way. One hundred and forty two in total.
More trees were cut and damaged on private land, and county officials confirmed no clearing permits had been issued for any of the three properties in question. Stop work orders are now stapled to several remaining trees in the park.
County attorneys filed their lawsuit in early June, listing Cunningham, his wife, Laura Brice Cunningham, Vlad and Jessica Popach and Julie Hsieh as defendants. The Cunninghams and Popaches work in real estate and Hsieh is running for Mercer Island City Council.
The suit accuses the defendants and unknown companies of multiple trespassing counts, damage to public land, negligence, and damage to environmentally critical lands at risk of landslide or erosion.
County attorneys estimate the damage adds up to about $2.3 million. State law allows for such damages to be tripled in these cases, which would bring the total to nearly $7 million. Pending additional costs for restoration, emotional damage, arborist fees and court costs should also be tripled, the complaint says.
While the cuttings damaged King County land, they likely increased the property values for the homes at the top of the hill by improving their views of nearby mountains, the attorneys argue. Damages to be determined in a trial should consider this boost in equity, the complaint says.
Similar cases have settled for far less. The city of Seattle brought a similar lawsuit against West Seattle homeowners in 2017 after they destroyed more than 150 trees there. The city agreed to settle for $440,000 and offered one family immunity from criminal charges in exchange for naming other property owners involved.
Some property owners respond
Hsieh pushed back strongly against the allegations within the lawsuit and her involvement. She lives on Mercer Island but served as the registered agent for her parents’ corporation (also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit) through which they bought the Issaquah home. Her parents closed on the house in February and hadn’t yet moved in when the cuttings took place, she said.
Never before had the family met the Popaches or Cunninghams, Hsieh said in a text.
“Still don’t know them,” she said. “Now there’s a gaping hole with a few damaged trees where there used to be beautiful trees.”
“My family got dragged into this,” she added.
Hsieh said she hopes those who “committed this terrible act” are brought to swift justice.
Vlad Popach confirmed Hsieh was not involved. Many of the other details he provided, though, raised more questions.
Popach said in an email exchange this week the remaining property owners wanted to cut the trees because he believed they posed a threat to the homes in question, citing widespread wind damage from windstorms last winter.
Popach acknowledged he knew the arborists would be cutting on King County land. The neighbors had called county officials to discuss the matter and received “verbal permission” greenlighting the cuttings, he said.
But Popach said he doesn’t remember the name of the county official who gave the permission.
As for the cuttings on private property, Popach said he does not believe permits were needed and that none of the work was carried out to improve the views for these homes, he said.
As the county’s lawsuit moves forward, officials declined to comment on the case further.
Popach refused to name those who might be able to back up his claims: the arborists.
What’s next?
Caitlin McNulty and her husband moved to the area about 18 months ago with their infant son and they live not far from Brown. McNulty’s husband was actually the one who scrambled up the hill with Brown.
They’re displeased and frightened by the cuttings. What if that falling log hadn’t been stopped on its way down the hill, McNulty wonders. It might have hurt somebody or even kept going all the way to I-90.
Trees in the area are susceptible to high winds, she said. But the trees that were cut sat downslope from the homes in question and also were hundreds of feet away from them.
“You want to feel like your neighbors have your back,” McNulty said. “It makes me feel even worse that they’re pretending to be safe while actively putting my family in danger.”
The area is prone to landslides, McNulty said. That sort of risk can be mitigated by trees anchoring soils to the mountainside. And these trees belonged to the county, so they should have been protected.
But now, many of them have been cut or damaged and McNulty wants a slope assessment to determine whether the landslide risk has increased.
Yes, the mysterious crews physically cut these trees, McNulty said. But she holds the people who hired them more responsible for the damage.
