One year ago this Wednesday I was at Sea-Fab getting an iced americano when my phone rang. I very rarely answer my phone. But I did that day because I was expecting a call from Junior’s school about her poor attendance.
That phone call sent me down a rabbit hole for a couple hours of stress, fear, helplessness, anger, rage and embarrassment. I did not tell anyone about that phone call for nearly a year.
Then the Spokesman Review ran this story a few weeks ago and I read it on my lunch break when the Seattle Times had it up on their site for a few hours. I read it and I cried. I cried and then I wrote a letter to the editor.
About 17 minutes later I got a call from a news editor at the Spokesman Review to verify that I’m an actual human and I actually wrote that letter. I am and I did. I said thank you to the editor and got all choked up again.
For a few hours I thought they might publish my letter. But I’ve since learned that their letters-to-the-editor are very brief, political and opinionated. They don’t need any thank you notes.
My letter was basically a thank you thank you thank you note: thank you for publishing this family’s story because my story was very similar, a cliff-notes abbreviated version of this dad’s 30-hour quest to save his daughter. Our story lines were very similar: Daughter interrupted drug deal, drug dealer needs money to make up for lost funds. Holding daughter until you cough up money. Dad stays on the phone jumping through hoops, cash withdrawals, wire transfers. All the while thinking his daughter is being held at gunpoint in an SUV somewhere.
That was me for a couple hours. But the dad in the article drove all over Washington and Idaho sending money all over the place on-the-hook for 30 hours.
I’ll tell you all the details of my two hour shit show some day if you’re actually interested. But the S-R article and these paragraphs here are helping me let go of a shit load of anger and embarrassment.
If any of these & those words help to prevent another family from falling into a similar shitshow scam, then it’s worth it.
If you answer your phone make sure it’s real. for real. really.
let it go
to voicemail
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