SLUG: B01_church_lady_accused
SET: B
CONCEPT: The church lady got accused of running a scam by her own son
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 720

So this lady I met at church, Marjorie, got accused of running a scam by her own son.

He drove down from Columbus to sit her at her own kitchen table.

Papers in one hand.

Her bank printout in the other.

He said mom what are you into.

He said mom I need you to be honest with me.

Marjorie is 62 years old and she has been a widow since 2019 and she has never done a dishonest thing in her life.

She kept trying to tell him but he kept shaking his head like she was a child.

He said moms your age do not just start pulling in that kind of money.

He was looking at $3,400 that had landed the month before.

He said this is not right. This is somebody using you.

She got up from the table and walked him down the hallway to the little room where the wifi router lives.

She pointed at a small device sitting next to it, plugged into the wall, a little green light blinking.

She said sweetheart it is that.

She said sweetheart I set it up on a Sunday morning and it just runs.

He stared at it for a long time.

He picked it up.

He turned it over in his hand like he was expecting a wire or a battery or something that would explain to him how his mother was suddenly not scared of the mailbox anymore.

He set it back down.

He sat on the edge of her bed and cried.

He said mom I thought somebody was hurting you.

She said sweetheart somebody was. It was the power company and the ortho office and the pharmacy and I was just too tired to keep telling you.

I need to tell you something.

I live two houses down from Marjorie.

I am the one who watched her son's truck sit in her driveway for four hours that Saturday and I am the one Marjorie called after he left, still shook up.

I am also the one who set the same little device up on my own kitchen counter about six weeks after she did.

Because I saw what it did for her.

Before that I was in the Walmart parking lot on a Tuesday in March holding a receipt for $300 worth of blood pressure medicine my husband takes and a cart full of things I was about to walk back into the store and put on the shelf.

A woman at the counter had seen my face when the card got declined.

She followed me out.

She did not say anything cute or hopeful.

She just said honey you do not have to sit in a parking lot by yourself and figure this out.

She showed me a short setup video on her phone right there next to the cart return.

She said honey it runs off the house wifi and it took me about twenty minutes on a Sunday.

I went home and I did not do a thing about it for three days because I did not believe her.

Then I thought about Marjorie.

I set it up on a Sunday morning before church, same as she did.

The first week $700 showed up.

I sat at the kitchen table and I stared at the phone for a long time.

I made coffee.

I did not tell my husband for four days because I was scared it was going to disappear.

It did not disappear.

The next week another number showed up and then the week after that.

Now on Friday mornings I make the coffee before I look at the phone because I already know.

I did not put the cart back on the shelf that next Tuesday.

I paid for the whole thing.

Marjorie's son calls her every Sunday now and he does not ask about the account anymore.

He asks if she is coming up for Thanksgiving.

She is.

If you are the person sitting in a parking lot right now with a receipt in your lap and a cart you are about to walk back inside, tap the button or image under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me on a Tuesday in March.

Pass it along if you know a Marjorie who could use it too.
