Emily's Crazy Last Hurrah in Austin

I meant to link to this a while ago, but better late than never! My adored friend Emily moved to DC a few weeks ago [ weep weep :( sigh ], but before she left she had to fit in a great story to remember our lovely town by. Here tis! Her story even made it on to the CapMetro blog. Go girl, you and your bike rule. We miss you both.

Emily's Going Away Fiesta

$ign of the Times

While we are not the only such culture, Americans are widely known for our need for instant gratification. The other American stereotype (that often goes hand-in-hand) is our ultraconsumption and widespread occurrence of living beyond our means. Of course we're seeing this played out with our current financial crisis.

I read today that Annie Leibovitz, the iconic photographer, is $24,000,000 in debt. I'm a fairly big fan of her work and I really was shocked to learn how a person so successful in her professional affairs can still live a false reality when it comes to finances. Here's the link to the excellent New York Magazine article about Annie's predicament:

http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/

I stand firm in my belief that financial education classes should be compulsory components of public high school and college education.

Willie by Annie Leibovitz

Trust and Deceit

After undergrad, I got a job at the headquarters of a national department store. My first position was filling in for an employee away on medical leave due to cancer. I grew to know this particular employee very well as she would come in some days between chemo treatments and we would work side by side. She was a sweet woman who seemed to be getting the short end of the stick when it came to life. Her husband had died, leaving her with five children. Shortly after she became sick with cancer. She was a low wage employee and had a hard time making ends meet.

Luckily, everyone at the company looked out for her. They would take turns making dinners for her to take home to her children. They frequently collected cash donations to help her cover the cost of her husband's funeral, her medical bills, and her children's needs. After some time, she met a new man and got married, and employees raised plenty of money to help pay for her small wedding. One of the dress designers even made her a one of a kind wedding dress.

Although I am generally not happy working in the private sector and this job definitely wasn't fulfilling for me, I really appreciated the generosity and sense of family that employees felt for each other. Even though the massive office housed almost 2,000 employees, we all still felt an important part of our own teams.

Which is why discovering the truth of this employee's story was so devastating for us.

No dead husband.
No new husband.
No cancer.
No children.

The first crack in her story came out when another employee received a strange call from the woman during a day she was supposed to be at work. Another call, then another, but no truth - just strange hangups. Finally, she admitted that she was in jail and begged the other employee not to tell anyone. She had been mistaken for someone else and needed money to get out.

The county we worked in kept all inmate records online, and this employee was smart enough to do some searching. It turned out our lady had been a first class con artist and had a rap sheet as long as Mike Tyson's. She had been in trouble for forging checks, grand theft auto, identity theft, and plenty of other major crimes. And somehow, while working at our company, she again had tricked the insurance company into thinking she had cancer and was collecting insurance money while also being paid normally while out on "medical leave."

Finding out this woman had betrayed all of our collective trust was absolutely overwhelming. Not only because everyone had given this woman significant amounts of money, but because we trusted and loved her. We felt sympathy for her hard knocks and those of her children. And we had special places in our hearts for her; we considered her one of those people we wanted to protect in life.

Although these unfortunate events took place in 2001, I've been going over and over them in my mind the past few days. On Monday morning, one of my coworkers was placed on "indefinite administrative leave" and went home immediately. We have no further information, but all I can think about is how genuinely sweet she is and how it will be so devastating to hear of her being capable any kind of deceit or wrongdoing in her professional role. The news should come tomorrow, and I find myself unable to fall asleep tonight. I so hope I am overreacting. I need her to be an honest person! Let's hope there is some explanation and I'm worried about nothing.