onelifetosave

UPDATE – When my cousin in Toronto offered me a roof over my head and to feed me, I had no other choice but to return to Canada to try to recover from all that had happened to me. Although I am now on assistance to survive, it only covers the most basic needs of shelter, food and meds. I am trying desperately to gain employment or get something going, but my need is still great. I hope that you will follow my story and donate the price of a cup of coffee.

I wish WordPress had the ability to add posts to pages, but it does not, so I am going to add posts for various aspects of my life, hopefully so visitors might recognize something familiar in their own lives and click to read a specific post.

As to how I ended up in this mess today, well, my story all started just over fifteen years ago, when I made the fateful decision to get out of my twenty-three year marriage and start over at the opposite end of the country. As with many life-changing decisions, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Boy, was I wrong!

The most hurtful consequence, emotionally, was my kids. You can read the detail under the Family – Kids posting. It’s all very sad. Family was the most important thing in my life and now it has all unravelled. It has been fifteen long years since I saw my kids and they don’t even know I am in Panama. My father died suddenly, in my arms, a couple of years ago and my mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, died last year. They were both my rock and I miss them terribly. Because of what I’ll call circumstances with money after my mother was finally put into a care facility, my brother and sister are also out of my life, which is not that tragic considering what they did to me, but that’s another story in itself.

Although my life, just like everyone’s, has its ups and down, the main reason I am in this destitute situation today is money, or, should I say, the lack of it.

With all the best intentions in the world I bought a dilapidated “mobile” home in Westbank, BC (Canada) in desperate need of repair. I did all my research, talking to Realtors, lawyers, bankers and the management of the park the house was located in and they all agreed it was a wise move. My Realtor insisted I could turn a quick profit by just “fixing it up” and reselling it. My insurance agent told me that if I upgraded the mechanical and electrical systems I could apply to have the registration updated to show it as new, and this alone would make me tons of money. I confirmed this with the park management, who told me it’s done “all the time”.

So began a year of seven days a week, fourteen hour days, tearing out all the bad and replacing and rebuilding it. As with most renovations, along the way I uncovered some “horror stories”, such as a major infestation of black mold in one of the bathrooms. My quick fix repaint turned into a complete rebuild of the room, tearing out everything back to the joists. The budget went from a couple hundred dollars to thousands.

Just as I was about to finish I called the original Realtor in to have a look and give me an idea on selling price. He was blown away by how different the place looked and insisted he could get me $159,000, pretty good when I only paid $29,000, but had also invested some $45,000 in materials alone, plus my own hard labour. Despite my euphoria at possibly making this kind of money I told him it was critical that I get it sold quickly, so I wanted him to list it at $139,000, but he insisted he try it at the higher price for a “couple of weeks”. Mistake number one.

First the Realtor was involved in another development and had some family issues. He did little of anything for the two weeks, not even post signs or do any advertising. When I finally cornered him, he admitted he has screwed up and agreed to assign the lising to two other agents. Mistake number two.

These guys were as bad as he was. No sooner had they taken the listing than they went on holidays. They made a number of false statements in their presentation folder on the house, like saying we had “exclusive use” of the beach, which we did not. After much grief they finally agreed to cancel the listing and let me go with yet another agent. Mistake number three.

The agent from Re/Max was a lier and a thief. He bs’d me into believing everyone else had been wrong and my place was the “best on the market” and I should easily get the original $139,000 I had been asking. He promised to move mountains to get it sold “right away”, but did nothing. Mistake number four.

Now, if you’re thinking that through all of this I was sitting on my ass just waiting for things to happen, I wasn’t. Sensing that I might have to wait until the following spring, when the better weather returned and the market improved, I had made inquiries to get mortgage financing in place to survive the winter. A private mortgage broker, who will remain nameless, other than in the lawsuit, told me there was no problem, considering the equity I had and the mortgage was confirmed in an email from her. The funds would be coming “shortly”. When the date came and went and I followed it up with her, suddenly she tells me that the investor doesn’t have the funds available, and won’t. Back to the drawing board. Mistake number five.

At the time I was listed with Royal LePage so I called their mortgage broker, Pam, who took all the info from me and researched a mortgage for me. She came back in a few days, saying she had found a mortgage for me and, although more expensive in both fees and interest rate, it was for more money than I needed. Everything was firmed up in early September and she was just waiting for some funds to become available to him to advance my money. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing now that I would be able to pay my creditors and survive the winter, and was optimistic that I would get a better price in the spring. Mistake number six.

A few weeks later there was a story in the local press about mobile home parks on native land. One of the head honchos, a former chief, Noel Dericksan, ran off at the mouth in the press about how he could not understand the crazy prices people were paying for mobiles on Indian land, especially when they had no interest in the land, and could be given notice at any time with no compensation. He suggested that Realtors were misleading people for their own gain and went so far as to suggest people who bought were “stupid”. Overnight the market collapsed. Realtors and lawyers began avoiding mobiles at all costs, advising their clients not to touch them. It was devastating to all those people who had invested money and years of hard labour in improving their homes, only to now be told they were virtually “worthless”.

Now in somewhat of a state of panic I called my mortgage broker the next day after the article in the paper. She called her investor, who said, in light of the recent press and the fears about mobiles on Indian land they had decided not to lend any more money on Indian land. My committed mortgage disappeared into thin air. Over the next few weeks I tried every single option to refinance, even trying to deal with the Indians’ own bank, but nothing worked. No one would touch these properties anymore. Stories began to appear in the paper about people losing their life’s investment. It was all very tragic, and even one older man, who had been working on his home for nine years, went into his room, laid down on the bed, and died. He had lost all hope.

So after all this I was left with no money, mounting bills and little or no chance of selling. My stress level was off the charts, and one night I came close to slipping into a diabetic coma. If my friend had not come along and got me to medical care, I might well not be writing this now.

A “friend”, who was actually my electrical contractor on the house, and whose son had worked for me all summer, split up with his wife and he was staying in a very expensive hotel. Having gone through all this myself before, I offered to let him stay at my place until he got things sorted out. After all this started to fall apart and the pressure was killing me, afraid to even answer the door or the phone, he suggested I needed to get away to save myself. When I said, as good as that sounded, there was no way I could just take off without the place being sold, he offered to rent it from me and look after it for me until I could sell it in the spring. He saw the kind of stress I was under and pushed me to get out from under all this stress.

I sold my beloved truck and all my worldly possessions and left for Panama, at least believing that it would be less stressed somewhere, anywhere, else. My good buddy, Wade, had made arrangements to take over “ownership” of the house so that he was authorized to sell it when the time came. A few months went by and things at least appeared to be calm. I trusted my “friend” was paying the pad rent, my mortgage and the utilities, so things weren’t getting any worse. Big mistake! Yes, there were obviously people looking for me, but this was pointless until I sold and had the money to pay them off, which I fully intended to do.

In an email one day by buddy tells me that he had showed up at the house and discovered several feet of heavy wet snow on the roof. This was the ONE thing I had stressed with my friend that he watch and clear off the snow every day as necessary. My buddy quickly shovelled it all off, only to discover the weight of the snow had cracked many of the roof trusses. When he asked my “friend” why he hadn’t done anything, even though water was pouring into one of the bedrooms, he said he “hadn’t noticed”! We soon learned this was a $20,000 problem, which I obviously had no way to cover.

It gets worse! My buddy also informs me that my “friend” hasn’t paid a cent in rent, or mortgage payments or utilities, since the day I left, and my buddy has been paying it out of his own pocket. I could have just killed my supposed “friend”. What a loser!

Can’t get any worse? Wrong! My buddy also discovered that this “friend” had been stirring up all kinds of trouble for me, giving out my buddy’s cell number, opening up my mail, which is clearly illegal in Canada, trying to cause trouble for me with park management and, in general, creating as much havoc as he could. Some friend! I wish him nothing but horrible things in his life to pay him back.

So now with all this, I was in a real mess. I had an unsaleable house in need of repairs I could not afford and was trying to sell it in a disastrous market. It could not be going worse.

Somehow, magically, my buddy managed to “sell” the place to a young guy who couldn’t afford to rent a place. My buddy was a former mortgage broker and he put together some very creative financing which I probably don’t want details on, but he managed to put a deal together. The “deal” only cost me about sixty grand when all was said and done, so there was no money left to pay anyone a dime.

The hardest part in all of this was that, when things had gotten really rough and I had no money left to finish the place, a friend’s parents had trusted me enough to lend me $10,000, which, at the time, saved my life. They were first on my list to pay back the minute a sale closed, but, now there was no money for them. It crushed me and if I have any luck with this site at all, being able to pay these dear people back is top on my list. I have never intentionally burned anyone in my entire life and it tears a hole in my heart that these people were victims here. No matter what, I do not wish to go to my grave not having paid them back for their faith in me.

Okay, I hear you saying, can this possibly get any worse? You betcha!

When I first arrived in Panama another “friend” I had met on the internet offered to find me a place to live in Boquete. She sent me pictures of what looked like a nice little Panamanian house, parfect for my needs and only $300 a month, which sounded cheap. She said her and her mother would make a list of all the things that were in the house for me, so that I would know what I needed when I got here. Despite my gut feelings against it, I sent her the first and last month’s rent to make sure it would be available to me when I arrived. Oh, I thought, what a warm, wonderful and helpful girl, and gorgeous too! Mistake number, oh, never mind.

Before I left Canada I never did get any “list” of stuff in the house, which turned out to be useless anyway because there was zippo in the house. Nada! Not a fork or a spoon. It also had a couple of minor things missing, like, oh, hot water or a fridge! No sooner had I arrived than I had to spend about a thousand dollars on everything from dishes to a very expensive fridge and water heater. Nice welcome to Panama!

Over the next few months the house became a living hell. I was trying to work on my computer to build my HelloBoquete website in the dining area at the rear of the house. It looked so perfect in the pictures she sent. What I didn’t know about was the yappy dog in the pen right outside my yard, who never stopped barking from morning to night, or the fact that the minute the sun went down the room was overwhelmed with every imaginable type of bug known to man. It was impossible to work in the evening. My computer screen was covered in mashed bugs.

Then the sprayer on the kitchen sink, which had been incorrectly connected to the hot water line, burst and flooded the place. I didn’t even have a mop, so was left trying to get an inch of water out the door with a broom. It was just one thing after another with the house.

When I had first rented it I had confirmed in writing that it was $300 a month total. No extras. No surprises. I had been warned. I got her reply that it was $300 “total”. Yet one more mistake.

After a couple of months the landlord presented me with the electric bill. I told her that her daughter had clearly told me it was total and there were no “extras”. As it turned out, not only was I to pay for my electric, but also for the previous two months which the previous tenant had also refused to pay. I called the daughter and explained in no uncertain terms that, first of all, I had learned that the place was rented previously for $225 a month, so they were ripping me off at $300, and I had an email from her clearly stating that there were no “extras”.  She agreee and said she would talk to her mother.

Another month went by and when I came home one night the power was off. Nothing unusual for Boquete, where the power goes off all the time. It usually isn’t off for long though and when I found myself wandering around trying to go to bed with no power, I started to wonder why this outage was so long? The next morning, surprise, surprise, I had no power. Now I knew I was going to lose all the expensive meat I just stocked up the fridge with and was very concerned about my very expensive insulin. By the end of the day, everything was toast, including my now very cloudy insulin. This was about the time I checked with my neighbours and no one was without power except me! They had simply shut the power off on me!

By now I was fuming and I called the landlord, but got no response. I called her brother, who spoke good English and explained just how thrilled I was that I had no power. He promised to check and call me back. No callback and yet another day without power. This was all absurd.

As luck would have it, or should I say “no luck”, my friend LizAnne called me to tell me that there might be an opportunity for me to be a property manager at a place up in Volcancito that her friend had just bought. I met with Jim for some nine hours on Sunday and agreed to move in the following week. I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of this disaster downtown fast enough.

So, my luck was finally about to change, right? Nope! For the closing, the house, which had three suites, was vacant. It was the perfect time for me to do all the renos needed to be able to bring in more rent, which the new owner wanted. Thus began another several months of seven days a week, fourteen hours days, for no pay, work to renovate the house. I hadn’t learned anything from my disaster back in Canada. The deal was I collected all the rent monies until the money I was investing in the renos was paid back. Sounded like a reasonable plan, at the time.

As with any renovation, things take longer than planned and you spend more money than planned. When my funds were getting dangerously low I did up an accounting of every penny I had spent and sent it to my contact in Canada, requesting some funds. This was the moment I learned they had bought a $200,000 house in desperate need of repairs with NO MONEY for the repairs. All he could tell me was to get everything finished and get the rent coming in to pay myself back.

Now it’s been four months with only one suite rented for a measly $300 a month. I have been paying all of the utilities which were to be shared by all tenants. I am still owed over $5,000 in money I invested in a house that wasn’t mine, with zero chance of being repaid by the owner, and lttle chance of renting the suites in the depths of the rainy season.

Okay, fine, but it could not POSSIBLY get worse, could it?

I late August my friend, who had been working on the websites with me, advised that her family had to get out of her house, and that their other house would not be ready for two weeks. She asked if they could store their stuff here and, considering we have tons of storage room here, I said yes. For two days we loaded box and box into the storage areas. I kept asking her where her family was going to live for the two weeks, but got no response. Finally, not having any prospects for tenants, I said they could move in here for the two weeks, but she had to understand that if anyone came along wanting to rent they had to get out right away. She agreed. She also agreed to pay their utilities and I told her clearly that I had zero money to pay anything for them. She agreed. We also agreed to go together on the food and I would pay 20% of it, which was pretty generous considering there was seven of them and only one of me. I was glad to be able to help out a struggling family. So her family of seven, plus three dogs and three parrots, moved in. You guessed it! Mistake number whatever.

When I told the owner of the house in Canada what I had agreed to, in the name of charity, he wasn’t too upset at me, but he said they had to pay whatever rent they would have paid had they got another house. Fair enough. He was agreeing to rent them an $800 a month penthouse for only $300, so that was very generous of him.

The two weeks came and went and I asked her what was happening with the house. She had lost her phone and could not contact the lady for the house, but she would go there again and get her number again. Never happened. Then she said the family was looking for another house, but I didn’t see a whole lot of effort on this.

Several more weeks went by and I told her enough was enough. They had to find another place now. I also asked her about the fact she hadn’t paid me a dime in rent or utilities or even for the food I had been buying for the family. Now I learned she had no money but would have some “soon” from some mysterious place. This was not looking good.

By now my owner in Canada was growing ever more upset at me, and I couldn’t blame him. I told her Jim was most annoyed that they were still there and wanted them out now. I also gave her a bill for the rent, utilities and food they had not paid for, $1,345 in total and explained that I desperately needed the money. Her response? She left on vacation for a week. I was livid. I had no choice but to tell her sister that Jim wanted them out NOW and to find another place.

I had to do my trip to Costa Rica for my tourist visa and had no money to go. When I returned, they were still here. She told me they had found a place and would be out by the next Sunday. Fine, but where is my money? No answer.

Sunday came and she phoned me, supposedly from the new house and told me the house had some challenges with the power and would take another week to solve. She left me no choice, but she knew I was really upset. How could I ever explain all this to Jim?

The following Sunday came and went and, you guessed it, they are still here. They have now been here for two months of their two weeks and they owe me $1,845. I stopped buying them food when it was becoming clear that I was simply getting ripped off. No one is speaking to each other and, as I write this, they are supposed to be moving out, but there is nothing going on.

There is much more to this story, from getting ripped off for my new camera, by someone in this house, to having food stolen from my fridge, but you get the drift. I am feeling very taken advantage of and have lost a lot of respect for the Panamanian people. Even their own police told me to never take my eyes off them when they are working here and that is sad. The house is like an armed camp now, with doors and gates locked everywhere and three big padlocks on the front gates. It’s a horrible way to live.

The point in explaining all this is to help people understand that I am not in this desperate situation because of any crime or hurting anyone or drinking or gambling it away. I have just tried to do my best and help others, but I am always the one getting the short end of the stick. When you have no idea where your next meal is coming from or how you will ever buy your medications to survive, it’s all a huge struggle just to face each day. I have had many moments where I just want to give up, but I am trying one last time to get back on my feet and move on. That is what this site is all about. I hope you can understand my plight and help.

Thank you.