Elderly Subscribe to Contest Obsession

Eighty-eight-year-old Richard Lusk of Victorville flew to Tampa last week, convinced that he was an $11-million winner in the American Family Publishers sweepstakes.

It was the second time he had traveled to Florida in search of the millions he was certain were his.

Undeterred by his futile trip in October, or the stroke that followed the day after his return, Lusk paid $1,700 for an airline ticket so he could hand-deliver his “winning” entry to the return address on the letter that declared: “RICHARD LUSK, FINAL RESULTS ARE IN AND THEY’RE OFFICIAL: YOU’RE OUR NEWEST $11 MILLION WINNER.” Lusk did not see the small print that said he was a winner only if he had the winning number.

“I didn’t see how I could be wrong,” he said this week in a telephone interview, back home and no richer.

According to Tampa airport officials, 20 people, most of them elderly, have flown there in recent years, looking for both their fortunes and American Family Publishers’ high-profile pitchman Ed McMahon.

The parade of disappointed seniors outraged readers of the St. Petersburg Times, which first reported Lusk’s story, and prompted calls for action against sweepstakes in Florida and elsewhere. It also focused attention on a phenomenon that experts and frustrated family members too often see in the elderly--a kind of “sweepstakes psychosis” that can put savings at risk and roil families.

Typically, it begins when someone erroneously believes he or she has won the sweepstakes run by marketers such Publishers Clearing House, American Family Publishers and others that use the lure of a big prize to sell magazine subscriptions and merchandise. In some cases it can then spin out of control, with a variety of results.

Among the signs of the phenomenon:

* Tampa resident Ina Brown, 77, believed American Family Publishers when it told her “INA BROWN, YOU STAND ALONE AT THE TOP--YOU’VE SWEPT PAST 200,000+ OTHER WINNERS WITH OUR FIRST $11,075,000 PRIZE IN HISTORY!”

Last week, after learning she was not the winner, Brown and another plaintiff filed suit against the company seeking damages equal to the prize and asking that the company be barred from using “Congratulations” and other misleading language in future mailings. Her attorneys said they have already received calls from hundreds of people, many of them elderly, who said that they, too, thought they were the big winner. The suit may become a class action.

* Florida Atty. Gen. Bob Butterworth this week filed an action against American Family Publishers, charging it with violating the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act.

* On a smaller scale, Cheryl Corente, director of social services at Castle Hills Retirement Village in Thousand Oaks, said sweepstakes frenzy is a fact of life. She estimated that 30 of the 160 residents, whose average age is 96, are caught up in the solicitations.

“I try to discourage them,” said Corente, who says she hates to see residents rushing to return entries within 24 hours and following other instructions that marketers use to create senses of urgency and excitement. “It’s like a life-and-death thing [for them],” she said.

Of course, many seniors who respond to the sweepstakes solicitations understand that they are simply taking their chances with millions of other entrants. And the firms that run the contests say their practices are well within legal boundaries. Sponsors of big-money sweepstakes won a major victory in California last year when a federal court ruled that their marketing techniques were “innocuous, common practices.”

“It’s not our objective to have people travel to Tampa,” said American Family Publishers spokeswoman Lonnie Miller. “We’re concerned when anyone is confused. We try to be very clear and specific in our language.” No purchase is ever required to enter, she said.

But “there does seem to be a greater susceptibility of older adults to these kinds of things,” said Anderson D. Smith, an expert on aging and memory at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Cognitive processes change in the normal course of aging, he said, and those changes may leave some elderly people less able than they once were to evaluate sweepstakes pitches.

Smith also speculates that the elderly constitute a generation that may be misled more easily than a younger generation. “They’re less cynical about what they read and more trusting about what they see.”

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People such as Richard Lusk’s son, Bill, describe the sweepstakes-induced frenzy that grips their loved ones. For five years, Bill Lusk said, his father has done little else but pore over sweepstakes mailings. The older Lusk’s unshakable belief that he had won caused frequent arguments. “We had absolute shouting matches at times,” his son said.

Often, the senior begins buying one magazine subscription after another in hopes of nailing down a victory. Lusk, his son said, “had a thousand magazines--many were triplicates of the same subscription and some went out in years to 2005.”

Next, the senior often gets on what the direct marketing industry calls “sucker lists” and is bombarded with sweepstakes offers, some legitimate, some not. As the excitement over winning gets ever more frenzied, once-warm relationships begin to fray.

That’s what happened to Hall Worthington, a businessman in Santa Cruz. In December 1996, when mailboxes were beginning to fill up with prize pitches, Worthington had a disturbing conversation with his mother, Ardela, now 86.

“She announced to me that she had won two sweepstakes,” Worthington recalled. “She told me she had won Publishers Clearing House and the sweepstakes sponsored by the Paralyzed Veterans of America and that she was going to be getting $20 million.”

Ardela Worthington has always been intellectually vibrant--she taught grade school in Oak Ridge, Tenn., for 40 years and was active in senior causes after retirement. But nothing Worthington said could persuade her that she had not won and won big. She had collected everything that Publishers Clearing House had sent her and tucked it into a file folder. Now she showed him the evidence, right there in big, bold letters.

Worthington then learned that his mother didn’t just think she was a millionaire, she was acting like one as well.

“Because she believed this, she went out and bought a new car that we had to sell, and she bought a $2,500 vacuum cleaner that she had absolutely no need of and that she couldn’t even turn on,” he said.

In some ways, her son said, the worst part was that she was no longer her interesting former self.

“She was just consumed about this night and day,” Worthington said. “Every word that came out of her mouth was ‘How shall I invest the money?’ and ‘I think I should rent a hotel room because I don’t want the Prize Patrol coming to the house because it could attract criminals.’ ”

In desperation, Worthington called Publishers Clearing House, with his mother beside him. He asked a representative of the company to tell his mother, once and for all, whether or not she had, in fact, won millions. Finally, the employee told Mrs. Worthington that millions of others had received a mailing exactly like hers, except for the personalized name and address. They couldn’t all be winners, the staffer said.

Mrs. Worthington was unpersuaded. Her son was outraged.

“I don’t know how those people can possibly go to work and draw a paycheck, working for that organization,” he said. “They are contributing to the delusions of hundreds of thousands of old people across the country.”

Like many others whose families suffer, Worthington said sweepstakes that allow the vulnerable to be tricked into thinking they are big winners are wrong, even if they are legal.

“It’s a national disgrace,” Worthington said.

Dave Sayer, the Publishers Clearing House spokesman who invented the Prize Patrol, said he was aware that some elderly people mistakenly believe they have won the sweepstakes offered by his firm and American Family Publishers. “We’re sensitive to it, of course,” he said. “We feel our mailings are clear. It says over and over again that there’s no purchase required.”

Sayer said the company does not target the elderly or any other demographic and describes the company as “a proactive participant in consumer education and protection efforts on the state and national level.”

Attorney Michael Lyons, who heads the committee on elder abuse of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., said he has seen elderly relatives of clients spend $2,000 a month on sweepstakes and scams.

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When they see sweepstakes-induced problems, families sometimes end up in an attorney’s office inquiring about a conservatorship or some other legal intervention, both to protect their loved one and to keep his or her wealth intact. “One of the fortunate, or unfortunate, realities of life is that children are counting on their inheritance,” Lyons said.

The process is traumatic, he said. “It creates tremendous stress between the generations.”

Corente of Castle Hills Retirement Village said loneliness often fuels sweepstakes fever, just as it sends some residents to the doctor every week, not for treatment but because they need someone to talk to. Others say the need to feel important is a factor. What person, battered by a lifetime of losses, wouldn’t want to be valued again? Ten million dollars might be enough to buy both independence and the respect that no longer gleams in the eyes of one’s children.

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Jane Wagner, a psychologist who lives in Beverlywood, has seen sweepstakes frenzy up close. Two years ago, Wagner began getting excited phone calls from her mother, Patricia Clifton, now 93, who said she was a $10-million winner.

“It started slowly,” Wagner recalled, “and then I realized it was just out of bounds. She was withdrawing large amounts of money from her savings account in order to play these sweepstakes. This was someone who saved and saved and saved on small amounts of income.”

Clifton lives in an apartment building for seniors in Santa Monica, where, for years, she did her own cooking and looked after her other needs. Now, Wagner learned, her mother was part of the swarm in the lobby every day when the mail arrived, eager to see what new promise of riches awaited them.

On a single day in January, Wagner happened to pick up the mail for her mother and found 20 sweepstakes and contest offers. Many asked Clifton to send in entry fees of $5 or more to collect the big-money prize they seemed to guarantee (such fees are illegal in true sweepstakes, although they may be collected for certain skill contests).

Clifton did not see or didn’t understand the fine print that says “this is not a check” on the authentic-looking phony checks that are a common feature of today’s junk mail. She tried to deposit several of them in her bank account. When Wagner talked to one of the tellers, she was told elderly customers often did this.

“They are playing these people like fine old violins,” Wagner said of the sweepstakes companies. She thinks that part of the appeal for her mother is that she fears she will outlive her money and become dependent on her daughter or grandchildren. Among the sweepstakes-obsessed, Wagner said, “the common thread is that they are no longer earning money and this is a way not to be a burden.”

Wagner isn’t surprised that the sweepstakes are flourishing--at least 300 companies have them, according to industry sources. “If you can get a list of seniors, if you can get a list of senior buildings, you’re on your way. It’s so deceiving, so ugly,” she said.

And potentially so lucrative.

Although Clifton likes virtually all sweepstakes, her favorite is American Family Publishers. According to her daughter, Clifton sometimes believes that McMahon and fellow endorser Dick Clark are friends of hers and that they want her and her alone to win the $11-million prize. “They don’t get angry with me,” Clifton has pointedly told her daughter.

When Wagner and her mother clash on the subject, Clifton often gets angry and sometimes defiant, not surprising as she fights for her continued independence. But it is hard on both of them.

When she is in the throes of her obsession, Clifton can’t talk about anything else. Wagner shudders at the thought of her mother’s hopes being raised, then smashed, again and again.

Wagner said she wondered if she should let her mother have her delusions; perhaps they comforted her in ways her daughter can’t understand. But Wagner decided to intervene when her mother’s fantasies began to squeeze every healthier interest and activity out of her life. Several months ago, she took control of her mother’s finances, in large part, she said, to preserve what money her mother still has so she can have the best possible health care.

When Dave Sayer of Publishers Clearing House was asked if he thought his statement that “the average reader who reads our mailings will find them clear and easy to understand” applied to rival American Family Publishers as well, he said: “We don’t have people showing up in Tampa thinking they’ve won and trying to collect.”

Sayer said his company has helped the Federal Trade Commission prepare “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” a brochure that emphasizes that legitimate sweepstakes require no purchase or fees. The company also speaks to senior citizens groups on consumer issues, he said.

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But Publishers Clearing House has had problems in the past. In 1994, it agreed to modify the language of its mailings, publish the huge odds against winning its big prize (up to 200 million to 1) and other reforms. That was after the attorneys general of 14 states, including California, had charged it with deceptive practices. American Family Publishers, meanwhile, is being investigated by officials in 19 states.

After Lusk’s story first appeared, American Family Publishers reimbursed him and his son for their travel expenses and for some of the magazines Lusk had ordered. Finally convinced that he hasn’t won anything in the sweepstakes, Lusk said he doesn’t intend to beat himself up over having been fooled. And he said he was looking forward to taking legal action against the firm.

“This situation is just dirty pool, that’s all,” he said.

As for Ardela Worthington, she seems to be recovering nicely. She moved in with her son in Santa Cruz about a year ago. And instead of arguing endlessly with his mother, Hall Worthington decided he needed to act, for both their sakes.

“I finally took the stuff away from her,” he said. “She’s gone cold turkey.”