HARRISBURG -- The charity director accused of embezzling thousands from the agency she ran may have shortchanged the group on work hours, too, according to records obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Instead of spending her workdays at the Voluntary Action Center of Beaver Falls, where she was paid $102,077, Darla LaValle spent many days in 2006 working on a political campaign for former state House Democratic Whip Mike Veon, records show.

E-mail messages between campaign volunteers show that she spent at least 13 weekdays campaigning during the five weeks leading up to Mr. Veon's contentious 2006 primary. E-mail records from other time periods were not available, but three people who worked on the Veon primary campaign said they saw Mrs. LaValle campaigning on numerous other days as well.

"She was there all day, every day for the whole spring up until the primary. She would come in the morning, stuff envelopes, go home to eat and come back to manage our phone banks at night," one former campaign staffer, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday.

All spring, she was in the campaign office from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. most weekdays and was often there on weekends, too, he said.

"She's a real nice lady and a hard worker; it's just that, I guess she was supposed to be working someplace else," he said. "I don't think anybody knew she had another job she was supposed to be at. She couldn't have had another position somewhere else and still campaigned as much as she did."

Another man who volunteered for the Veon primary campaign remembered that Mrs. LaValle "put a lot of time in" stuffing envelopes and working phone banks. "I was there a lot, and she was there at least as much as I was," he said.

Sometimes she brought along her husband, state Sen. Gerald LaValle, D-Rochester, or her granddaughter, according to "field tallies" obtained by the Post-Gazette. The tallies were reports e-mailed between campaign coordinators who tracked the number of people working on the re-election effort, the number of doors they knocked on and the number of phone calls they made each day. A source who worked on the campaign said names were recorded on the tallies only when people worked a full day.

Mrs. LaValle's attorney, William Ward of Pittsburgh, had no comment yesterday.

Mrs. LaValle retired in March from the Voluntary Action Center. The center receives about a third of its funding from government grants, including $99,900 in 2006.

Some of those funds were distributed through the Beaver Initiative for Growth, a now-defunct grant clearinghouse that was controlled by Mrs. LaValle's husband and Mr. Veon.

Mrs. LaValle, 68, was arraigned Thursday on charges that she gave herself raises that were not approved by her board of directors; that she padded her pension; and that she denied benefits to the agency's other employees, one of whom is her sister.

She was charged with four counts of theft and four counts of misapplication of government property. She faces up to 70 years in prison and $105,000 in fines.

The Voluntary Action Center distributes food, clothes, furniture, computers and medical equipment to the needy of Beaver County.

Attempts to reach the LaValles and Voluntary Action Center board members Thursday and yesterday were not successful.