My children have a Hispanic friend whose family seems to struggle financially yet whose family members make lots of seemingly expensive trips, especially to Italy, Mexico (particularly Monterrey), and the Los Angeles area. The vast majority of these trips involve the friend's mother. At one point, my kids' friend said their mother was making so many trips to Italy that she was taking classes to learn to speak Italian.
For a long time, it's been well-known among local school children that I will give rides after school to kids who need them. Several years ago when I drove over to school to pick up my usual assortment of kids one day, this same Hispanic friend came up and asked if I'd give them a ride to meet their mother at a job because she'd called and said she was running late. I'd told them I'd be happy to do this.
My kids' friend said their mother was at "an important meeting at the city attorney's office that was still going on", and they asked to be dropped off there to wait for her to finish. I asked if they knew how late the meeting would go, pointing out that they were welcome to wait at our house instead where they could visit with my kids, have a snack, start their homework, or just hang out. The friend said they'd been told the meeting wouldn't last much longer and that they were expected there, so I headed over to the title company building that also serves as the city attorney's office.
On the way, I mentioned to my kids' friend that I'd thought their mother worked at one of the other schools, and I asked if she'd changed jobs. The student said no but that because their mother spoke both Spanish and English well, she sometimes took translating jobs on the side. They said there was "a very important woman from Mexico" who sometimes came into our town for big meetings that their mother was often asked to serve as a translator for. My children and I had no idea what their friend was talking about and were very curious, but their friend either didn't know any more about the meetings or was reluctant to discuss them further.
When we got to the city attorney's office, the mother of my children's friend was waiting out front. She said her meeting had ended, and she was just getting ready to go pick up her offspring, so I was relieved she hadn't left yet. As I was driving off, I was surprised to see a woman I knew well who lived at Stonewall, near the LBJ ranch, walking out of the same office and going over to her vehicle. I waved at her, and she waved back, but she seemed to be in a hurry. I wondered again who the mysterious woman from Mexico was and whether my friend had also attended the meeting with her or was there on separate business. I then filed the whole incident away in my mind as one more among countless strange local goings-on I'd probably always wonder about and then promptly forgot about it.
Then today the following article appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. Upon reading it, I was struck by the facts that I've run across the name Global Financial Services before and that the Mexican woman in the article has ties to businesses in Switzerland, California, and the Houston area, just as my ex-husband's family and some of their associates, like the "Mystery Man" I've blogged about before (see 12/26/09), do.
Now I'm curious to know if Ms. Gomez might possibly be the Mexican woman who came to our town for meetings at the city attorney's office. If she's not, I confess I'm still curious to know who the woman visiting here was. In any case, I'd really like to know what the meetings here were about, who else attended, and whether they're still taking place.
Copy of comment that had to be removed by me as discussed below.
Copy of comment that was posted and later removed by someone who hacked into this site; I am reposting it here.
