| A Cesar Chavez celebration |
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Hi ,
Sometimes a nonprofit fundraiser can be really inspiring. Like the Las Mañanitas breakfast for the Cesar Chavez Service Clubs. More than 500 people attended, as well as 80 of the more than 400 kids who participate in their programs in San Diego. Lamont Jackson, superintendent of the San Diego United School District, urged those kids to love themselves unconditionally and to extend that love to others. I’d never heard someone in his position speak that way. Another speaker, Josie Talamantez, told how she founded the Chicano Park and fought to get it declared a national park. She gave the students a lesson Cesar Chavez taught her when she was far away from home. You have to do whatever you need to do wherever you are. Diane Takvorian, the executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition, talked about environmental justice and not accepting the false choices people try to foist on you. Like when people declare that we can only go green if we sacrifice jobs. This is not true. Throughout the morning, the crowd shouted, “Sí, se puede” and sometimes clapped in rhythm to the words. At the end of the morning we clasped hands and sang De Colores, a song that celebrates the different colors of the world. It was very exhilarating, even for a cynic like me. George Carlin once said, “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”
The most outlandish nonprofit fundraiser I’ve ever been to
In the seventies, the YMCA in Bogotá, Colombia needed to raise funds. Larry, the CEO, was a professional skydiver and had the perfect idea. He’d sell tickets for people to watch him parachute into a bullring. I’m not making this up. I was there that summer. It was just after I’d graduated from high school. I thought his idea was fantastic.
The bullring in Bogota was in the middle of the city. On one side, two multi-story buildings stood about fifty yards apart. Those buildings inspired Larry. He would guide his parachute between them and land on a bull’s-eye in the center of the ring.
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The night before the event he went on TV. Larry told his audience that the winds were treacherous above Bogotá because of its high elevation. He’d be lucky to make it to the bullring and, if he didn’t, he’d fry on the high voltage wires surrounding it. He also mentioned he had a wife and a young son. Larry knew how to sell tickets. Was it all circus promotion? Not really. His pilot had secretly hired an ambulance to be close by.
A couple hundred people bought tickets to go inside the bullring to see Larry defy death. First some singers and amateur bullfighters (no kills and baby bulls) performed. Larry’s plane flew overhead and dropped small parachutes to see if they could land inside the ring. None of them did. Then he jumped.
The chute opened and Larry swung back and forth to aim for the space between the two buildings. His wife tried to get closer to the ring and a policeman pushed her back. She was so nervous she hit him. Not a good thing to do in Colombia. Larry, swinging madly, sank toward us. He reached the space between the buildings and somehow squeezed through. He maneuvered himself and landed right on the bull’s eye—on his butt. The crowd went wild and stormed into the bullring to congratulate him. He was a hero. At least I thought he was.
A short time later Larry was transferred back to the U.S. Evidently YMCA management wasn’t quite as enthusiastic as I was about his fundraising strategies.
About forty years later I met some representatives from Colombia at an international YMCA conference. “You were there during the “paracaídas,” they said in wonder. I’d been witness to a legend.
Anyone else with a wild and strange nonprofit story? Please reply to this email.
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| Feedback from a reader about Swindlers Everywhere |
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Anne H. forwarded me her own strange experience with a con woman. Here it is.
A middle-aged women at my church was in a class with me because she said she was thinking of converting to Catholicism. She came up to me one day after mass, and asked me if I knew anyone who was renting a room or needed a roommate, because her allegedly alcoholic cousin had kicked her out of her house. She played upon my sympathies and charitable nature. I told her she could stay at my house for a few days. It turned out she was unemployed and not looking for work. She alleged in her Twitter account that she was on SSDI for PTSD. She had a gym membership where she showered and looked decent. She preyed upon churches and volunteer organizations where charitable people would house her. I had to actually evict her because I could not get her out of my house. She was simply a clever transient. Fortunately, I did not wind up being cut up or financially scammed. Of course, she did steal some things, but nothing valuable. I have learned that no good deed goes unpunished. And that there is a reason that people like her are on the streets. She was also delusional and claimed that I was her cousin, although she had no relation to me. She also claimed to be descended from Aristotle Onassis and the Scripps family. She wanted to join the DAR, but when we traced her ancestry, she was just descended from eastern European immigrants a few generations ago. It was scary to have a psychotic person living in my house. She is middle aged and someday her luck will run out and she will be on the streets. Her Twitter account is scary. At my age, I am not used to researching people on social media, but I certainly will in the future. And I will tell all people in the future who want to con me that I need to run a background check on them first.
Con artists know exactly what buttons to push. At least Anne was able to get her out of the house. What a story!
Has anyone else had to deal with someone like this??
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Our board member, Nicole Larson, interviewed The San Diego Union-Tribune reporter, Dana Littlefield, on how reporters cover crime. Unlike how they are often portrayed on TV and film, reporters like Dana don’t sneak around and trick people. They have their own code of ethics and almost never get personal with their sources. But they do establish contacts with police to get exclusive information. Sometimes reporters help police solve a case. But they also have to be watchdogs. If a source illegally gets information about a crime, a reporter will use it, unlike the police.
Don’t miss our next presentation by author Debby Larkin on April 15 at 2:00 pm, Pacific Time. Her True Crime book, A Lovely Girl, covers the saga of the last woman to be executed in California. Here is the link to register:
https://sistersincrimesd.org/events/
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The most notorious love letters in American history—supposedly destroyed a century ago—
mysteriously reappear, and become the coveted prize in a fierce battle for possession that brings back to life the lawless world evoked in the letters themselves.
Lisa Balamaro is an ambitious arts lawyer with a secret crush on her most intriguing client: former rodeo rider and reformed art forger, Tuck Mercer. In his newfound role as an expert in Old West artifacts, Tuck gains possession of the supposedly destroyed correspondence between Doc Holliday and his cousin and childhood sweetheart, Mattie—who would become Sister Mary Melanie of the Sisters of Mercy.
Given the unlikelihood the letters can ever be fully authenticated, Tuck retains Lisa on behalf of the letters’ owner, Rayella Vargas, to sell them on the black market. But the buyer Tuck finds, a duplicitous judge from the Tombstone area, has other, far more menacing ideas.
As Lisa works feverishly to make things right, Rayella secretly enlists her ex-marine boyfriend in a daring scheme of her own. When the judge learns he’s been blindsided, he rallies a cadre of armed men for a deadly standoff reminiscent of the moment in history that made Doc famous: The Gunfight at the OK Corral.
Download free here
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A new start with a small FBI profiling unit has turned into everything I had told my boyfriend I would avoid: dangers, crazy missions, and psychotic killers.
What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. At least for now.
Hope Springs is a small town with a bad attitude and a high death rate. Throw in a rotund, suspicious sheriff, a gun-toting doctor, and I have to wonder if the odds aren’t stacked against me?
When Deputy Matthew appears on my radar with his wide smile, and dead fiancé, my investigation suddenly takes a terrifying turn.
The killer hunting Hope Springs’ residents is closer to me than I’d feared, and I may not make it out of this alive.
Download free here
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Lexi felt so betrayed that she snapped. And it changed the entire course of her life.
28 year old Lexi could have had it all, if it weren’t for that fateful night 10 years ago when she was charged with murder.
Now she’s back in her close-knit hometown, Garrison, with a tarnished reputation and a criminal record to match. Her sole mission is to shed her past and learn to live her new life. After all, she already served her time. She spent a decade grieving over what happened to her best friend, even if the details are unclear.
But now that private investigator Zac Booth is in town, her plan of moving on is completely derailed. He’s supposedly in town looking into a disappearance from over ten years ago. Lexi doesn’t see how she could possibly help. She doesn’t want anything to do with another mystery, even if Zac is undeniably attractive. In fact, he’s the first attractive man she’s seen in a decade who wasn’t telling her to get back to her cell.
Either way, she can’t help him. ...Or can she? The more she tries to escape the past, the more she learns that her past is not at all what she thought it was.
Read free in Kindle Unlimited or buy for $0.99
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Amidst the glitz and glamor of Los Angeles hides a dark secret.
A man accused of murdering his wife goes free. Angelina Lagarde, a young detective fresh out of the academy, is put on his protection squad. But something isn't adding up, and when he gets off scot-free, her instincts flare.
Unfortunately, Angelina’s senior-level partner, Detective Lance Slate, likes to play things safe for an unknown reason. She can see that he’s a good detective, and even though he doesn’t trust the acquitted man either, he tells Angelina over and over to let it slide.
Angelina’s positive outlook combined with a stubborn determination ends with her re-investigating a case that had just been closed. With many obstacles before her in the form of nasty superiors, a fearful partner and her own inexperience, Angelina pushes through to find the truth, even if it is at the cost of her newly appointed badge - and even her life.
Read free in Kindle Unlimited or buy for $0.99
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