Josephine Marsh didn’t wait for anybody else to get her house back.
Two weeks after she was admitted, she was sitting up in her bed at Providence St. Vincent with a tray of meat loaf and mashed potatoes in front of her and color in her cheeks. She’d gained six pounds. She’d asked the nurses for a crossword puzzle book and a pen.
And she’d asked to see a lawyer.
Detective Okonkwo found her one. A woman named Margaret Tran, an elder law attorney with a small office on Hawthorne Boulevard. She’d been doing this for thirty years.
I was there the afternoon Margaret came. Josephine had asked for me.
“I want you to hear it,” she said. “You walked my boy home. You should know how it ends.”
Margaret sat beside the bed with a briefcase on her knees. She was about sixty, small and fierce, with short silver hair and red reading glasses.
“Mrs. Marsh,” she said. “First, we revoke that power of attorney. Today. In writing. You’re competent. The doctors have confirmed it in three separate evaluations. You have every right to revoke it.”
“Good,” Josephine said.
“Second, we file a lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court to void the quitclaim deed. You signed it under duress, without understanding what it was, and it was notarized by a man with a direct interest in the transfer. Oregon courts take that very seriously. With your napkins and the detective’s evidence, I’d be surprised if a judge didn’t set it aside.”
“And the loan?” Josephine asked. “The hundred and forty-two thousand dollars?”
Margaret smiled a little.
“That’s the lender’s problem,” she said. “A lender who loans money against a house the borrower obtained through fraud doesn’t get to keep a lien on the real owner’s property. They’ll have to go after Darla for it. Not you.”
Josephine sat back against her pillows.
“And the rest of my money? My savings? My pension checks?”
“Restitution will be part of their criminal sentence,” Margaret said. “And we’ll file a civil claim, too. Oregon has a special law for elder financial abuse. If we win, a court can award you three times your actual losses.”
“Three times,” Josephine repeated.
“Three times.”
Josephine looked over at me. Then back at Margaret.
“Mrs. Tran,” she said. “I spent thirty-four years teaching eight-year-olds that if you take something that doesn’t belong to you, you give it back. With an apology.”
She folded her thin hands on top of her blanket.
“I’ll settle for the money,” she said. “They can keep the apology.”
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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