‘90s FAMILY : Friendship Can Be Costly When You’re Alone

They met in a Southern California rest home. She was a lonely, 88-year-old widow. He was a charming, twentysomething opportunist.

It was a parasitic sort of match, made not in heaven, but in the desert of old age, frailty and pride.

As the widow’s daughter tells it, it was also a horror story of exploitation that she felt helpless to prevent.

The young man was working in the rest home where her mother was recuperating from an illness, the daughter said. The mother and daughter argued about whether the mother would be safer in the institution. The mother wanted to go home.

“The young man convinced her she did not belong in a place like that where a lot of people couldn’t even have a conversation. He convinced her that he could do private care,” the daughter said.

Before she knew it, her mother had signed herself out of the rest home and the man and his girlfriend had moved themselves into the widow’s home, with the widow, about 100 miles from the daughter. “She didn’t even know their last names,” the daughter said.

The widow gave the couple $10,000 to buy a new car, telling her daughter it was better if her name were not on the records in case they got into an accident. She also paid them $1,500 a month salary. Somehow, the daughter said, they transferred the rest of the money from her savings account into a separate checking account that they could access.

The man took her to movies. He took her to Las Vegas. When she was ill, the daughter said, “They put her in a wheelchair and put the wheelchair in the back of a moving van and drove her to the hospital.”

After 14 months, the woman’s $45,000 savings account was gone along with the couple. Notified by the bank, authorities issued a warrant for the man’s arrest.

He still calls and visits. And the daughter said her mother wants him back.

When he asks to come over, “She’ll say, ‘There’s a warrant for your arrest.’ He’ll say, ‘So are you going to call up and say I’m there?’ ” She doesn’t. “She’s so lonely. She enjoys his company,” the daughter said.

Working in an elderly person’s home is one of the most common ways to exploit the growing number of seniors living alone, experts say. Neighbors may also persuade the elderly to pay for picking up mail or shopping for groceries. Shoppers may pick up extras for themselves.

As more people live longer, more are also living alone and becoming more vulnerable to exploitation. As of 1993, 9.4 million people 65 and older lived by themselves, representing 41% of all older women and 16% of all older men.

There are some steps families can take to protect elderly relatives, even if they live far away. Wendy Lustbader, a Seattle social worker and co-author of “Taking Care of Aging Family Members” (Free Press, 1994), said abusers do not like to prey upon seniors who have a variety of unpredictable visitors to the home. If family members can’t be there, they can arrange for visitors from churches or home delivered meals.

The National Assn. of Area Agencies on Aging also offers an Eldercare Locater, at (800) 677-1116, for information on in-home care fraud and other complaints and services.

But before intervening, family members must carefully weigh the potentially devastating impact of breaking the illusion of friendship, even from an abuser, Lustbader said. While anyone feels embarrassed to have been duped, it is even more humiliating for self-reliant people who have become dependent.

The best way to prevent such situations, Lustbader said, is for younger people to realize now that building loyal relationships among family and friends provides the strongest safety net when crises occur in old age.

The daughter of the widow who was exploited said every professional she has consulted said as long as her mother is still functioning, her decisions are hers to make, even if they seem foolish.

Losing $45,000 in 14 months in order to be free of a rest home may seem like a lot. But the daughter said, “I’m not going to argue. Maybe it’s not so horrible. She did get to go home.”

* Lynn Smith’s column appears on Wednesdays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or via e-mail at lynn.smith@latimes.com. Please include a telephone number.