Select Case Does Not Evaluate The Value Returned By Datareader Or Dataset

I am working on a company sign out sheet for our Intranet. The application accesses a sql database.  I tried using a datareader as well as a dataset to access a small piece of information regarding the group that each employee belongs to in the company.  My last attempt was to assign the value to the text property of a text box and evaluate the text from the text box with the Select Case but that did not work either.The application is supposed to generate an email to our receptionist as well as to the group technical assistant responsible for each group according to the value that is passed into the Select Case statement.  With the datareader as well as the dataset and even now with creating a text box and accessing the text property, I was able to assign the group value to a variable (I can see the value in the subject of the email), but when the variable is supposed to be evaluated by the select case statement it skips right through all of the cases to case else and uses only the receptionist's address in the email as if it doesn't even see the value of the variable.  
 I have searched for a possible answer to the problem I am but so far have had no luck.  Any ideas? 
 
I included the part of the code that I am having trouble with:
 
'********************************************************************************************
' New DataSet is created to determine the group the employee belongs to so that the appropriate
' group technical assistant is emailed when employee signs out
'********************************************************************************************
 
' declare variables
Dim sqlGroup As String ' string variable to store sql statement for dataset
Dim BLGroup As String ' string variable to store the bl group of the employee
Dim emailAddress As String ' string variable to store resulting email address
 
Dim groupDS As DataSet ' dataset variable
Dim groupAdapter As SqlDataAdapter ' sql data adapter variable
' sql statement to access group value from the database
sqlGroup = "SELECT BLGroup FROM BLGroupsView WHERE (RTRIM(fname) + ' ' + LTRIM(lname)='" & employee & "')"
 
' repopen the connection (leftover from working with the datareader)
Connection.Open()
' create new SqlDataAdapter applying sql statement and connection
groupAdapter = New SqlDataAdapter(sqlGroup, Connection)
' create new dataset 
groupDS = New DataSet()
' populate the dataset
groupAdapter.Fill(groupDS, "BLGroupsView")
 
' get the value stored in the BLGroup column (only one row is returned at a time) 
BLGroup = groupDS!BLGroup
' Create GroupTextBox TextBox control.
Dim GroupTextBox As New TextBox()
' Set options for the UserTextBox TextBox control.
GroupTextBox.ID = "GroupTextBox"
GroupTextBox.Visible = "False"
GroupTextBox.Text = BLGroup
' just trying anything with this next line, even when i didn't set this the select case statement did not seem to see the value returned by the variable
GroupTextBox.runat = "server"
 
' use a select case statement to evaluate the value of the group (didn't work when I passed in the BLGroup variable either
Select Case GroupTextBox.Text
Case "bh"
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com; bhassistant@myaddress.com"
Case "env"
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com; envassistant@myaddress.com"
Case "sw"
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com; swassistant@myaddress.com"
Case "fac"
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com; facassistant@myaddress.com"
Case "www"
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com; wwwassistant@myaddress.com"
Case Else
emailAddress = "receptionist@myaddress.com"
End Select
 
'*************************************************************************************************
' set new message object
Dim myMessage As System.Web.Mail.MailMessage = New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage()
'**********************************************************
' set message properties
'**********************************************************
myMessage.From = "me@myaddress.com"
myMessage.To = emailAddress
myMessage.Subject = employee & " Signing Out at " & TimeOut.Text & " " & BLGroup
myMessage.Body = employee & " Signing Out at " & TimeOut.Text & " for " & Destination.Text & " will potentially return at " & EstTimeIn.Text
'***********************************************************
' set smtp server name
smtpMail.SmtpServer = "mailserver1"
' send email using smtp
smtpMail.Send(myMessage)
 It sends the message and returns the BLGroup value everytime but only sends to the receptionist.  Thanks for your time!