As victims of organized
stalking, my children and I are often forced to cope with problems
related to constant tampering with various items in and around our
home. Our garage has been broken into so many times and our garage
door opener and locking mechanism have been so thoroughly and
repeatedly disabled that we've been told they are now impossible to
repair, yet there is no point in replacing them, because they are
almost immediately taken out again. And due to a combination of
tampering with the controls through attic break-ins and some type of
remote device that is frequently used to trip the reset button on it,
our water heater is often disabled.
However, the item most
commonly illegally tampered with at our house is our backyard
swimming pool. The following chronology documents some of the major
events in the history of our pool for your consideration.
August 1991: I went into
the hospital to give birth to my youngest child. Due to
complications, I did not return for a week. Imagine my surprise when
I got home to find a large hole in the ground just outside the back
door! My husband had suddenly decided to install an in-ground
swimming pool without bothering to discuss it with me first. I was
very upset about both his making all of the arrangements without even
telling me and also about the safety issues related to having an open
pool so close to the house that it couldn't even be fenced off, when
we had young children and a new baby. (My husband immediately
ordered a locking safety cover for the pool to ally my fears.) When
the pool was completed, my husband engaged a pool maintenance company
owned by a friend of his I'll call “Pool Guy 1” to take care of
it regularly for us.
May 1999: My husband
startled me one day by suddenly declaring that the pool was too
expensive and we should just dismantle it and have the ground filled
in. I told him the kids would be very upset to lose it and that we
needed to discuss this together as a family. I also tried to
question him about the expense, since as a physician with a good
income, this should not have been an issue.
June 1999: My husband
suddenly moved out and filed for divorce with no advance warning.
About two weeks later, I noticed that the pool was turning green. I
began calling Pool Guy 1 and left repeated messages on his answering
machine, but no one ever called me back. A week later, with the pool
now very green, I began calling other pool maintenance companies in
the area. They all said they were too busy to take on new customers
and couldn't help us. Eventually, someone gave me the name of
another man I'll call “Pool Guy 2” who was starting up a new pool
maintenance company in our area. Pool Guy 2 came out to clean our
pool, and I hired him to take over the regular maintenance. Pool Guy
2 also told me that Pool Guy 1 had skipped town for some reason.
Over the years, we had a
great many incidents of breakage and damage done to our pool tile and
equipment. Pool Guy 2 knew I was on a tight budget and managed to
help us keep the pool going, often making repairs with used or
refurbished parts.
2011 and Early 2012:
Sometime in this time period (I can't remember exactly when), Pool
Guy 2 told me he and his wife had reached the point where they no
longer wanted to live in our area. He and I discussed some of the
problems here. He said he was moving his family to Boerne but would
continue serving his regular customers up here. Shortly after that,
Pool Guy 2 told me that his wife and child had been seriously injured
in a car wreck on I-10 while in the process of moving to Boerne and
that they'd been hospitalized in San Antonio. Then a few months
later, he said he himself was having serious health problems. Not
long after that, he suddenly greatly increased the rates he was
charging me for his regular pool service.
Summer 2012: We gradually
noticed our pool turning green again and realized that Pool Guy 2 had
not been coming as scheduled. We also noticed that our Polaris,
which Pool Guy 2 had said he was taking home with him to work on, had
not been returned. I tried calling him, but there was no answer. As
the pool got worse over the next few weeks and I still couldn't reach
him, I began calling other companies. One of the companies I called
turned out to be owned by the adult children of Pool Guy 1. Like all
the other companies I called, they too said they were too busy to
take on new customers, but they said their father had recently come
back to town and was taking a few regular customers of his own. They
said they had talked to him and that he was willing to come over and
help get our pool going again if I wanted him to. I did not want to
hire him again, but his children claimed Pool Guy 1 had done rehab
for substance abuse problems and was now reliable again, so I got his
phone number but continued to try to get someone else to come out.
Eventually, desperate, I did give Pool Guy 1 a call. When another
week went by where he didn't return any of my calls, I called his
children back and told them I couldn't reach him. They said they'd
talk to their father, and shortly after that, he did call me and come
out. Pool Guy 1 looked at our pool—and then disappeared again.
Before he left, he told me that Pool Guy 2 was now in rehab for
substance abuse.
With the pool getting
filthy, I tried to get someone from Kerrville to come over and help
us, but no one would. Eventually, I was able to arrange for a “Pool
Guy 3” to drive up to Fredericksburg from Boerne to teach one of my
adult children and me how to take care of the pool ourselves. When
he got here, Pool Guy 3 showed us that our automatic chlorinator had
been stolen by someone who knew what they were doing, since the
missing chlorinator had been expertly plumbed around. I knew this
had to have been done fairly recently, because at one point, I had
sent my friend Medawar photographs of the pool plumbing, and the
chlorinator had been there. (Most likely, the chlorinator was
removed by Pool Guy 1.)
We have taken over caring
for the pool ourselves since then, but we cannot afford to replace
the chlorinator or the Polaris and have never been able to get the
pool back to its proper condition.
Pool Guy 2's company is
publishing advertisements in the local newspaper for their services
again.
On a final note, I believe
being submerged in water provides protection from radio waves; see
