Raising the Alarm on Donations Not Received
From for profit recovery homes to foster care, to pawn shops and easy loans, from GoFundMe scams to fake panhandlers, the so-called poverty industry is rife with opportunities to take advantage of another’s misery for monetary gain.
Locally and recently, there were accusatory back and forth comments on Facebook about helping or profiting from cancer survivor, Section 8 housed, Medicaid and Social Security assisted, Sparks resident, Denise Cook, who has a blog called Help me! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!
In May, Cook posted a video of bed bugs crawling around her residence at The Lofts Apartments on the Facebook page of the Reno/Sparks mutual aid group. She said the problem had persisted for over three years, despite regular sprayings. This time, after the community’s shock, a more radical approach was taken.
“I was out of my apartment for seven weeks and they were supposed to get rid of the bedbugs,” Cook told Our Town Reno in a recent phone interview. “And then they literally gutted the apartment. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that could have been saved, but they just didn't want to bother with it.”
It was election season and incumbents seeking re-election in both Reno and Sparks rushed to help as Cook was put in a temporary apartment. A challenger in her Sparks ward, Wendy Stolyarov also checked in, helping with support and purchases she needed. It was a chaotic time as Cook’s cat hid and then likely ran away and much needed items such as her mobility scooter had to be left behind or were left behind unwillingly in all the rush and newfound focus to finally get her apartment rid of bed bugs.
Previous attempts by Cook to get help through different legal organizations, government offices, her own GoFundMe attempts, media, Nextdoor and social service agencies had been unsuccessful but now it seemed she was finally being helped by caring neighbors and community leaders. They took over directing the help and seeking out donations rather than the mutual aid group.
Cook, who is in her fifties, says she also made new friends. “ [Community support] was amazing. It was just overwhelming with people being nice and helping and people did a lot of stuff to help me. Like I'm a plus-size and it's hard to find clothes in my size and people went and bought clothes for me and stuff. So that was really nice because when I left, I wasn't allowed to take any clothes, just what I absolutely had to have, like meds and stuff and it was incredible.”
A previous fundraiser Cook organized for herself, using the same visual as on her blog, had not gotten very far, before a post on a mutual aid group did get lots of attention.
Many Setbacks Despite all the Help
The bugs were still a problem though. “They did a heat treatment. And so you would think that would have gotten rid of the bugs before they moved me back in, but they didn't. So I still have that. It's not as many, but I still have them,” Cook said in our recent interview. “So all of that was done, all this, losing everything I owned or nearly everything I owned. And then I'm back in the same situation where I'm still dealing with bugs and it's incredibly frustrating,” Cook said over the phone.
Donation accounts had also been set up to help her, but that set off divisions and allegations of theft of what was intended to help her.
“I never saw it. I have no idea,” Cook told us of some of the donations. “They raised money through Facebook, mostly I know of two donations outside of Facebook that were sent through PayPal.”
She says a well known person in the mutual aid community we tried to interview, but who never got back to us to respond to the allegations, used her own accounts to receive some of the donations. Cook says this woman also kept telling her that her left behind items would be replaced and that new ones would arrive.
Cook says the woman also threatened to sue her for libel after she started writing about these developments, including allegations she only received about half of the more than $5,000 she estimates was raised for her.
“There's no way for anybody other than her to know how much she raised, because it didn't go through a platform. It went directly to her,” Cook told us.
Others in the mutual aid community corroborated these accounts, while some took the side of the accused woman, saying Cook was exaggerating her problems.
“She said it was pro bono and that the funds were supposed to be used to help me,” Cook told Our Town Reno. “Somebody at one point said something about me getting gift cards. And I said I hadn't received any gift cards. And so because sometimes people say something and I don't know if they're just asking or if they're asking because they donated that and they're checking to see if I got it. But it seemed like people had donated gift cards, but I didn't get them,” she said.
We couldn’t get this accused person’s version so we decided not to publish her name, but it’s unfortunate that a story of a community coming together to help Denise Cook went so sour, that her cat disappeared, that she lost so many possessions in the ordeal, that she feels donations meant for her were never received, that she had to deal with new problems when items disappeared, that people in the mutual aid community got so angry at each other and that bed bugs that set it all off apparently remained.
“I don’t know what to do,” she recently posted on her blog. “I’ve spent everything I had on trying to replace things, and it’s all for nothing. I want to scream, and just shake people who wronged me. I’m not going to DO that, but sure want to.”
She also says her apartment’s management should also be responsible for some of her losses due to the persistent bed bugs.
After the story was published the mutual aid group released this statement in the comment section: “We would like to clarify the anonymous person referenced in this story is not an admin, moderator, or affiliated with our group, Reno/Sparks Mutual Aid. Further, our group was one of many that assisted with the effort to help but were not spearheading it. The fundraiser on Facebook was not started by us nor did anyone on our moderation or admin team have access to it.
We believe that aftercare is a necessary part of mutual aid, and know that many members of our group became friends with Denise, including our founder. We cannot comment on the person who collected donations. We are heartbroken that Denise is still dealing with the same situation and ask the Reno Housing Authority to act swiftly as promised in many emails sent to Denise over the years.
Finally, those hoping to find Denise’s cat should like Help Bring Mama Cat Home for more information.”