They’re Good People
I’m retired from health and rescue after over five decades. I am now blind, but at the time of the following events, I still had my vision somewhat intact. Because of health issues, I recreated the golden years of my life and chose to raise trees and parrots.
My son lived 1,500 miles away, so I lived alone—a geriatric wheelchair-bound ol’ bitty who chose to live by the beat of my own drum. There was a catalyst event that started the following events.
I will NOT disclose what occurred, safe to say, the authorities were called and warnings were issued to the neighbors in the strongest wording. That initiating event only seemed to light fires under them. I was about to learn a lesson of a lifetime. It was a lesson that was both unwanted and undeserved.
Nevertheless, a life lesson straight out of THE OUTER LIMITS or TWILIGHT ZONE. So decades ago, I had purchased acres of land from a family member, so I started planting on land that had just sat untouched up until then.
The shape of the 40.2 acreages looked like a cooking pot with an S-shaped handle from high above. I had my home built in the eastern/southern corner. I started planting southern-zoned trees 18 years ago. Many different fruit and nut trees. One special tree, an olive tree.
One day, my tree man contacted me asking if I was interested in purchasing cherry trees from Japan. I jumped at the chance and obtained two of them, a male and female. There was just one thing. I thought to myself…where in the holy heck am I going to plant these trees?
My acreage was full. So I planted them near my southern home. Little did I know, that would be the wisest choice I could have made on many levels. The first season they bloomed, their fragrance could be enjoyed a mile away on a calm wind day.
Their blooms proved to be one of the most beautiful things one could see, making them the showcase of my home. They are the first things your eyes scan to and you become mesmerized by their enchanting beauty and fragrance.
Throughout the following years, I noticed the female tree would throw babies every third season, sometimes every second. The roots of these saplings could, as they grow, strangle any trees near them, so they had to be uprooted and replanted in free ground.
I planted them along the sides of my winding driveway and along the sides of my home, like a gift-wrapped home of cherry blossoms. The land to my left was rocky soiled land.
Not earth that one could easily plant on, but some developer bought it and sectioned it into about 3/4 acre plots and built one home on the most southern. When the new homeowners moved in, my years-long nightmare began.
I put up chain-linked electric fencing—and unknown to the neighbors, full audio-video day/night security cameras. This is because I was having fruits, nuts, and vegetables from my garden come up missing the following season after they moved in.
Chaos broke out the following spring, a year that I had baby cherry saplings pop up. Nine of them to be exact. I let them grow to a safe replanting age and rolled out in my wheelchair with buckets of water and shovel in hand to get to work.
As I was on the ground busy digging up babies, the neighbor, Karen, came out of her house demanding to know what I was doing. I informed her I was digging up the saplings to give to the neighbor who lived north of my acreage. She shocked me with her response.
She went from 1 to 100 in a 10th of a second, screaming at me about how I couldn’t do what I’m doing. Apparently, the trees belong to her and I had to give them to her. I informed her “that would not be happening”. This angered her even more and she advanced toward me, spewing verbal vomit and anger.
When she put her foot and hands on my electric fencing, in what to me was an attempt to climb over, she got the shock of her life.
After she regained her breath, her verbal vomit became pathetically comical. I just kept repeating “my land, my fencing, my property, my trees. I will do as I please, Karen”. I quickly grew tired of this tornado of spinning verbal vomit, put my shovel into the earth upright, and climb back into my chair.
I grabbed the bucket that had a few saplings and yelled, “Bye-bye”. As I was waiting for my wheels to engage, I watched Karen go back into her house and I went into mine. About 30 minutes later, I heard my parrots screaming. Someone was ringing my bell and knocking.
My camera showed an interesting sight. Three officers. When I answered and asked what I could do for them, they informed me they received complaints. Apparently, I was “stealing” trees and had attacked someone a little while ago. They asked if I knew anything about it.
I said “follow me” and rolled them to the saplings I still needed to uproot. They asked me if I was planting them. I said, “No, I’m digging them up”. They asked “Where are the trees you’re accused of taking?” I rolled them to my work shed.
They then asked me to take them to where the supposed assault happened. I rolled them back to the saplings in the ground, pointed to the fence line, and said “there”. They asked where, clearly confused. At this time, Karen ran out and started her verbal vomit again.
Both officers tried getting her to calm down and return to her home, to no avail. In fact, I couldn’t believe what they did next. They called for backup.
After what seemed an eternity of ear-shattering, nauseating verbal vomit from her, she was manhandled into submission by four of our finest in blue and they pulled her back into her home. The two officers still with me asked if I could try to be a little more “clear as to what had occurred”.
Without saying a word, I pulled my cell phone from my wheelchair pocket, pulled up my security archives app, narrowed in on the time in question, put the cell on speaker with the volume turned up to max, pushed play, and handed the cell to them.
I then pulled up county land titles and deeds and showed them my property lines, and how my fence line was 15-feet inside my property lines.
I then pulled up the receipts, import/export clearance documents, and clear descriptions of the Japanese cherry trees, making sure they noticed MY name, MY address, MY signature of receipt, and dates/times.
One officer walked back to their car and the other explained my right to have her cited for trespassing, to which I said “YES”. He then said he will file trespassing on her. He then walked to his car and I wheeled to the front of my home. I watched them talk with each other.
After a short while, one of the officers who was in Karen’s house came out and walked up to them. They continued talking while one of them was writing on a clipboard. Two of them then walked back into Karen’s house. Very quickly after, the situation escalated.
I could hear Karen’s verbal vomit permeate the air with a vile nauseating green haze of disgusting epitaphs. Then, as quickly as the verbal assaults began, a calming peaceful quiet crystallized in the air.
I guess I had forgotten to breathe because I was shaken out of my fog by one of the officers, who was tapping my shoulder. He placed his card in my hand, explaining his phone number and case number, then asked me to forward him a copy of my security footage relating to that complaint.
I shook his hand, thanked him, and we parted ways. By then, I was exhausted so I went inside to eat an early supper and planned for early retirement that night and would finish the sapling work in the morning.
I called my other neighbor and told her “I’d roll by her way tomorrow”. She said she would just meet me at the fence and use her hook line to pull the bucket over the fence. That plan suited me just fine.
As I was eating my supper. about two hours after the afternoon’s crazy circus show, I got a shattering intrusion. Someone started pounding my front door as if trying to wake all the dearly departed within a 50-mile radius.
Security cameras showed Karen and her husband Kevin at my door screaming, “I know you’re in there…come out here now”. More pounding while I was on phone with the officer from earlier—I’ll call him Zeus.
He could barely make out what I was saying over the pounding at the door and the parrots’ screams of fear. Minutes later, I could hear sirens on my security feeds.
Moments later, six officers surrounded my front door, and after a few minutes, they were able to de-escalate the anger that permeated the air. An officer called me on my cell asking if I wanted to trespass Kevin now too, to which I gave him a resounding “yes”.
I watched on the surveillance feed as the officers took them down my drive. The cameras at the south gate were very blurry—it seems Kevin or Karen sprayed something on them, but the audio was still crystal clear. The officers gave Karen another trespass charge and trespassed Kevin as well.
Karen earned her first trip to have a cozy meet and greet with the judge. I planned to be a visitor for that! After everyone was gone, I called my other neighbor’s husband. I asked if he could come on over after dinner to clean my cameras before sunset in exchange for a basket of fruits, their choice.
It’s good to have great neighbors who are kind and giving of their time and elbow grease. The next morning, I resumed my sapling uprooting. If I thought it was over, I was so wrong. Karen came out to offer reruns of her verbal vomiting, her karenisms, and her mental gymnastics of pure rage and crazy.
It was then that I confirmed in my mind that this Karen was a special kind of Karen, a narcissistic sociopath who lived in some altered reality that consisted of unicorns, rainbows, and minions of monkeys who were at her every beck and call.
I finished the last sapling and pulled myself to my chair to put all saplings into one bucket. While I was calling that neighbor to meet me at the north corner, I rolled past Karen. She started screaming at me, demanding I hand over her trees. I told her “Karen, we went over this yesterday.
WHAT IS YOUR MENTAL MALFUNCTION, KAREN??!! They’re not your trees. I promised them to MY FRIEND. Not you”. I made my way to the good neighbor who asked me what was going on. While I was explaining to her the preceding circus show of crazy, our finest in blue rode up to us.
It seemed Karen called and made a second complaint against me. Only this time, I had supposedly taken money from her in exchange for the saplings. This officer knew nothing of the prior day’s events. So…the three of us viewed the security feeds of 50 SHADES OF CRAZY.
My poor neighbor just kept shaking her head and told the officer that Karen needed a pretty new white jacket with extra-long sleeves. The officer snickered. After he regained his composure, he told us he was “ALL OVER THIS”. My other neighbor and I chatted for a while longer.
We arranged a time for her to come over to pick fruits and stop by for tea, then we parted ways as I had workmen due to arrive to restyle my south fence and gate.
After the electrician, fence man, and his workmates finished up, I invited them up to my house for a quick BBQ of burgers and a salad from my garden.
Our late lunch was disturbed by a barrage of screeching that broke our sounds of silence, shattered the stratosphere, and gave the angels above some heavenly hearty laughter. When I realized what was going on, I burst out laughing. Apparently, Karen had gotten her hands on a megaphone.
I called the non-emergency line. Funny thing is, that time I didn’t have to say a single word. I could hear the operator tell me she is “sending the squad back out there”.
Karen earned another meet n’ greet with the judge, and a couple more charges of breach of the peace and harassment of a disabled elderly person. We offered the poor officer who had already been there a burger and tea. He took us up on our offer and called in for a 20-minute break.
We had a too-short, lovely respite. It ended all too suddenly. The poor officer was called back into service. He thanked us, chugged his tea, and grabbed his burger and ran. I told the workers, “Welcome to my life…a never-ending soap opera entitled AS THE CRAZY CIRCUS TURNS”.
They heartily laughed. They thanked me, packed up, and did one last test on the gate before they left. All was quiet, but we all know that hair-raising, fear-evoking old adage: IT’S ALWAYS CALMEST BEFORE THE STORM. On a Saturday morning. I was out pulling veggies from my garden.
I heard a faint hissing sound I couldn’t make out. Then hell broke loose. The next thing I knew I was being punched and beaten. There was no way I could fend off the blows from fists coming at me from multiple directions. The blows seemed to never end. When I awoke, it was evening.
My chair was on top of me and I was laying in curdled puddles of blood…my blood. I tried finding my cell. It was at my side with the screen shattered. I dialed emergency but I couldn’t talk…it was garbled. My old friend Zeus and his partner showed up along the eastern wall. I heard them calling my name.
I started screaming, it was all I could do. I guessed they called the fire department, because after a short while I could hear more sirens. I texted Zeus the code to open the south gate. They found me.
I will spare you readers all the gore and simply say I ended up with my jaw broken in three places, seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, a concussion, a lacerated liver as well as other soft tissue and organ injuries, major black eyes, along with a broken arm.
My body looked like a patchwork painting in hues of white, black, blue, purple, and crusted browns. I looked the pretty picture. Zeus and another officer visited me after I arrived back home from the hospital. We talked—a difficult venture for me as my jaw was still wired shut—about what happened.
And they took copies of security footage. I’ll never forget what that footage showed. Turns out Kevin sprayed paint on what he thought were all the cameras facing me at the time of attack.
He didn’t know about the cameras in the fruit trees and along the western wall. Kevin never laid a fist on me but three men pummeled me while he watched and laughed, calling out blows as if he was a spectator at a WWE fight match. Kevin is married to the right woman.
They are BOTH that special kind of crazy. Kevin earned a pair of shiny new as well as free four-star accommodations after his photoshoot for his starring role in the movie 50 SHADES OF CRAZY, as well as his recurring role in the soap opera AS THE CRAZY CIRCUS TURNS.
Kevin got out on bail while awaiting trial. Investigators were now busy finding the three beasts from Hades. I told the investigators to search for Kevin and Karen’s friends, associates, and family members because I had never seen them before. Well, well, well.
Investigators do what investigators do oh so well. Weeks later, they found them. The truth was cold. It turns out they were Kevin’s three younger brothers. All I can say is Kevin’s family tree grows nothing but rotten apples. Arrest warrants were issued and forwarded five states over.
They were picked up in their home state and issued their own sets of “bling” and given photoshoots and four-star accommodations. Well, I assumed Kevin didn’t like that we gave his brothers their own starring roles in this crazy soap opera and movie.
The night Kevin’s brothers were given their bling, my security cameras caught something even crazier. Kevin and Karen were going shopping on my land. I called the brave Boys in Blue. They came up in the dark (no lights or sirens).
The drama play that Kevin and Karen put on in my backyard was priceless. I popped my corns, sat back, and was entertained, nay, I was mesmerized by the pure audacity and entitlement of the Ks.
Their impromptu acting was chockful of gut-splitting jocularity at its finest. I remember thinking I needed to plan for an Emmy awards show because they both certainly earned one that night. A mix of Laurel and Hardy and Monty Python.
Four officers chasing two rather rotund people around as they were throwing their ill-gotten gains at the poor officers. Truly a food fight of gargantuan proportions. As all plays do, this one came to an end.
After the bling was passed out and the curtain fell, the two K’s were taken for more photoshoots and accommodations and invitations to visit the judge. Eight days after the special K food fight festival, I was suddenly jarred awake to horror. It was the thunderous sounds of engines roaring.
There was earth shaking-pounding, and the fingernail-on-chalkboards screeching of metal on metal. I called the authorities, naturally. Karen’s two brothers were caught red-handed in their trucks with oversized tires, chains attached to their tow hitches.
The other ends of those chains were attached to what was left of my mangled fencing. Several poles were pulled out of the ground. Sparks were flying everywhere. These two brothers turned out to be a special kind of stupid, too.
Attaching METAL CHAINS TO A METAL TRUCK, THEN ATTACHING THE CHAINS TO AN ELECTRIC SOURCE??? Really??? I shut off the power grid to the fencing and they got detained too. Ok folks, if you’ve been keeping up on your headcount, we are up to seven.
I thought to myself, just how bad can this soap opera movie get? Little did I know. Oh, how little did I know. I still had a lot of learning to go to find out just how deep this crazy rabbit hole went.
While I was busy having my security fencing rebuilt and fortified after that, I was waiting with eager anticipation for my day to shine in court. I was jolted out of my euphoric haze one day by a constant buzzing and knocking at my door; my security fencing was still under repair.
Security cameras showed a couple of sheriff’s deputies awaiting my response. When I opened the door they informed me they had a warrant for me and I would be going with them. They told me to stand up and not fight them.
When I tried to explain to them that I had been wheelchair-bound for about a decade by then, it got really bizarre. They told me they were informed I was “faking for sympathy” and they pulled me out of my chair.
When I crumbled to the floor, the look of shock and embarrassment on their faces was almost worth what I was going through. They spent the next three hours trying to figure out how they were going to transport me and my 1,000-pound wheelchair.
They ended up transporting me using a folding wheelchair that they cuffed my hands to. After my own photoshoot, I was processed and told I was being detained for grand theft, filing false reports, and multiple charges of harassment and intimidation.
I used my one phone call to my lawyer. This was a whole new level of crazy. I will spare you people the quagmire my lawyer pulled me out of. But here is the juicy aftermath.
According to what investigators and my lawyer were able to piece together, Karen’s sister, who happened to work for the county court’s office, pushed through falsified reports to have the county’s prosecutor file formal charges against me.
The grand theft was built on lies that I had pilfered all the Japanese cherry trees on my land, and by then I had 72 of them. They claimed each tree was worth $550. I was accused of taking $30,600 in trees. I was accused of harassing their family members.
The family of crazy, both Karen’s and Kevin’s families, were all listed on the complaint against me. Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. They filed an 11-million suit against me. They each were asking for 1 million in damages. CRAZY OUTRAGEOUS.
Oh, and Karen’s sister used a gullible judge to sign the warrant. It took a little over two years to get my woes fixed and my record expunged. Over another year and a half, Karen, her sister, and Kevin agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges and served six months, 11 years, and six years respectively.
Karen’s sister was fired by the very same judge she snowballed. Karen’s two brothers served five years each and were ordered to pay me $50,000 each in restitution. Kevin and Karen were ordered to pay me $25,000 each in restitution.
Kevin’s three brothers each received 25 to life on assault on an aged, disabled person with grievous bodily harm and ordered to pay $250,000 restitution each. My lawyer had his payday when he counter-sued both families. We settled for 3 million. My lawyer took 1/3rd.
I ended up with five of the six homes that used to belong to the three main family units. This was as well as cash, stocks, bonds, and jewelry. All parties involved in this nightmare were each given permanent stay-away orders to not come within 1,000 yards of my person or property.
Everyone received 8-10 years’ probation with notices that their original charges (except Kevin’s three brothers, who were prosecuted on all original charges) would be refiled and prosecuted should they fail to meet every stipulation of the original sentencing.
My good neighbors came for a visit after things calmed down. We reminisced. I promised I would try to keep our community peaceful from then on, but I seemed to be a magnet for crazy.
We laughed, shared a great steak n’ lobster BBQ, and sipped mint juleps as the sun went down. Truly great people.
Story credit: Reddit / luvvvbughugs