A pet peeve kind of Monday . . .A red light means stop. I have been writing it for 14 years in this town now, so you think I would just give up.
But there it was the other morning. I was stopped for what seemed liked minutes when a woman in a blue Toyota whipped around on my right and plunged headlong past the blazing red light and into the intersection.
How she did not get smashed and die, I haven’t a clue. Someone, though, is going to die because of such foolishness.
People who take advantage of elderly people: I have no greater pet peeve. Let me tell you a story.
Her name is Vivian. She is 86 years old.
For whatever reason, she decided to call and talk to me before her daughter or anyone else.
She does not want me to use her last name. She explained that her daughter has her power of attorney, and Vivian is fearful she will put her in a home or something similarly awful for what she did.
She bought a book.
She saw it advertised on television and thought she might like it. She called the number at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t get around well enough to go to a mall anymore,” said Vivian, a registered nurse for 50 years.
A week later, two men from Salt Lake City called.
She was eligible, one of the men told her, for a considerable amount of grant money. Their job, they said, was to find people just like her for whom the grants were intended.
What, they asked, did she need?
Well, she told them, she would really like a walk-in bathtub.
Oh, they told her, there is grant money specifically for that.
She sure would like to have her windows weatherproofed, she told them after some prodding. Is there a grant for that?
Absolutely, the two said.
They called Vivian a couple more times that week. She thinks now they were just gaining her trust, getting her to tell them everything.
And she did, including the number on her Visa card.
When the dust settled, Vivian was out $5,860, all of it charged on her credit card. No walk-in bathtub ever arrived, none of her windows were weatherproofed.
“The bank,” she said, “is trying desperately to get the money back, but I have little hope of ever seeing it again.”
Vivian survives on Social Security.
She knows it was her purchasing the book that led the two Utah con men to her. She was a name on a list the bookseller sold, she believes.
“I am not whining,” Vivian said. “You know, I used to be a tough old broad. That’s what people used to tell me. And now, I am losing that.”
She is smarter, she said, than getting taken like that.
“It is why I am so embarrassed to tell anyone. I was so stupid.”
It is a lot of money for her, and she is telling me, she said, because she wants to warn others.
“I am not mad at them,” Vivian said. “Oh, I am so mad at me. At the same time, those two men, I don’t know how they can stand themselves.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
