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THE MOMENT I WAS PULLED BACK INTO THE GAME
In March 2015, I
had been mostly retired from my trial practice for several years and was focused
on completing my memoir, In The Game,
about my life as a solo practitioner lawyer and single mother starting out in
the 1970s. I had cleaned up my act and was also teaching yoga and meditation,
making peace instead of war. Although I still daydreamed about trying cases, I
had no intention of rejoining the litigation battle. Then one day I was
suddenly back in the game on the side of the angels, a real one.
Reverend Tooks is
a spiritual counselor and reader I have known for twenty years. Her
spirituality is bible–based but non-denominational and people of all faiths and
no faith have lined up for years to sit with her in her little office full of iconic
figures from every faith tradition.
She and her
husband, an African American couple in their late eighties, have lived in a dilapidated
little house in South Central Los Angeles for forty years. They’ve been in
temporary housing paid for by their insurance company, since an electrical fire
in the ceiling of their home seven months earlier. Within 24 hours of the fire,
a fire and restoration company swooped in, bamboozled Mr. Tooks into signing a
contract, and then moved the Tooks out of their home and into temporary housing.
The same day a truck and crew hauled away everything in the house, including
the family safe.
Reverend Tooks had
now been displaced for months from her home, the sacred space in which she
prays, meditates, and counsels people. Her bible and sacred artifacts were
boxed up and whisked away with everything else, including her diabetic
supplies.
When I speak with
her by phone, Reverend Tooks says, “I want to go home.”–Her voice trails off
and she sounds lost. I am alarmed at the despondence I hear in her voice and I
want to help her. I have known her to be there for anyone in need and met her
when she was helping a client of mine. Now she needs me, something I only learn
indirectly because she would never presume to ask me for help
I learn that
although their insurance company has paid out nearly $200,000.00 on the policy
to third parties, no repair work whatever has been done, their house is
trashed, and they now face becoming homeless. The whole house could have been
rebuilt for that sum. The insurance company informed them that insurance is no
longer going to pay for temporary housing, and they have nowhere to go. I
suspect a fraudulent scheme to steal the insurance proceeds, and then to steal
their house. It looks like financial elder abuse targeting elderly African
Americans in older neighborhoods.
Reverend Tooks and
her husband and I meet up at the little corner house on West 50th
Street. After I explain what I think the legal case is and how I might be able
to help them, Reverend Tooks, who has followed my legal career, whispers, “It’s
like the old days, isn’t it, Peggy?”
She’s right: I’m already fantasizing about
picking a jury and putting on the case. “Did you have to go this far to get me
back into court?” I joke. I cannot
believe I am about to venture… back into the game.
“I wanted my house fixed up but I didn’t know
it would happen this way,” she says softly.
As a sly smile breaks across her face she asks, “Do you think I can have
a pretty kitchen and a purple carpet?”
She is sending me
into combat.
I file Reverend
Tooks’ case the following week and drop in to the offices of the scalawags behind
this scheme, and serve them. They turn over the checks they have not yet cashed
and agree to talk settlement. A few months later Reverend Tooks and her husband
move back into the little house in South Central LA, now with a pretty kitchen
and purple wall-to-wall carpet.
“I could get used
to this again,” I said to myself, as I realized how crucial my help was to
these two people who were easy targets for unscrupulous scammers. Two more
cases were about to land on my desk and I was truly back in the game.
