For years now, ever since Mom (my mother-in-law) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, my own mother has been considered the “good” mom, the “easy” mom because she has required very little from us in the way of care. She’s in her late 80s and lives in northern Wyoming. She still drives her own car, takes care of her own finances, cleans her own house, and stays busy with gardening, sewing, reading, and going to the rec center to swim. By comparison to my mother-in-law, she’s doing great. Lately, however, I’ve noticed just a bit of “slippage” mentally–she’s not quite as sharp as she once was, needs things explained quite carefully and repeatedly, and she seems to be a bit more muddled than normal.
This past weekend Mom came to visit for a couple days before the wedding of her grandson, Sam, on Saturday. One of the first things out of her mouth when she arrived was: “I had the most harrowing experience this morning!” Now, I kind of mentally rolled my eyes at this because Mom’s sense of hyperbole is always a little dramatic–it’s not just hot, it’s stifling; someone’s not just nutty, they’re depraved. So how harrowing could her morning have really been? She then went on to relay that she’d gotten an early morning telephone call from my nephew, Sam. After saying “Hi, Grandma,” he said he was calling from Las Vegas; he’d gone out there to see a buddy who really needed some help and in the course of driving in Vegas, he had become involved in a bad car accident. He was to blame. Not only that, the injured party in the other car was a young woman who was seven months’ pregnant. Oh, and he had been drinking, so he was in jail and had found a lawyer to assist him, but the lawyer needed $2,500 to get him out of jail and to start taking care of things. Sam then put the lawyer on the phone, but not before he asked Grandma to keep this confidential and to not tell his dad what he was asking.
“What did you do?” I asked with dread in my heart.
“Well, I was so rattled, I didn’t know what to do at first,” she said. “He was talking so fast and I was trying to write down everything the lawyer said. Finally, I called your brother and told him I couldn’t leave until after 9 a.m. because I had to go to the bank when it opened. But I didn’t tell him why I needed to go the bank, because I’d promised Sam I wouldn’t tell anyone. But before I left for the bank, I decided I needed to pray about the situation, and then I thought maybe I’d call Pastor and tell him about it and maybe get some guidance on how to proceed.”
Long story short, her pastor recognized this call for the scam that it was and told her in no uncertain terms that she should absolutely NOT wire the money to the Dominican Republic as she had been instructed. Thank heavens.
“Isn’t that something?” she said when she was finished with her tale. Now here’s the scary thing: While Mom was kind of outraged/amazed that someone had tried to trick her, she didn’t seem terribly worried or upset that she had swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker, nor did she seem to think that she’d behaved imprudently or was any way partly to blame for nearly giving away $2,500 of her money. Did it not seem funny to her that Sam had taken off for Las Vegas only two days prior to his wedding day? Didn’t it seem peculiar to her that he would have called her for help in a crisis instead of calling, say, his twin brother or his sister or his dad or his fiancee? How could she think that he would actually ask her to keep this a secret when he and his father are extremely close and share everything? And how could she not see that wiring money to the Dominican Republic seemed kind of odd when my nephew was supposedly in Las Vegas? There were red flags popping up all over the place, and Mom didn’t see a single one.
“I’ve heard of this happening to other people before,” she said breezily, “but it never dawned on me that someone might try it with me.”
I tried to talk firmly to her about turning down anyone who asked for money over the phone, but I’m not sure that my words penetrated her brain. She was just too wound up about the drama of it all to really listen.
So now my mom, the “good” mom, the one who could take care of herself, has suddenly been given a much higher place on our list of worries. As I went on my morning walk today, I tried to think of ways to safeguard Mom. Could we move to her town to keep a better eye on her? No, because moving would mean we’d have to uproot my husband’s mom from Grace Pointe, which I think would be devastating for her. Could I contact the bank and ask them to call me if Mom tries to wire money? Would there be some way to stop these calls from reaching her?
It makes me angry that some lazy, dishonest person out there is scamming little old ladies out of the few dollars they have, that they are targeting a very vulnerable, trusting segment of society. Mom dodged the bullet this time, thanks to her pastor’s wisdom, but will she be more careful the next time a con artist reaches her on the phone? Will she be more skeptical, less willing to believe the caller’s harrowing tale? I hope so. I pray so.
Your worrying friend,
Martha