When other help fails

What's that phrase made famous by Sir Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never give up."

One of the first persons I met in Woodstock in 1996 was a man who had multiple disabilities and was unable to work. From time to time he asked me for help in dealing with agencies, and I was glad to help. Then he got a computer, and I became his Tech Live go-to guy. Now, anyone who really knows me, knows that I'm the guy who forgets that most computer problems can be solved by merely turning off the computer, waiting a minute or two, and turning it back on.

He was injured in a Greyhound bus accident one winter, when the bus ran off the road in Nebraska while he was returning from a trip to Colorado. Greyhound has the absolutely worst, most unfriendly voicetree on its telephone system that I had ever encountered. And I helped him cut his monthly phone bill down, after the scoundrels at the phone company loaded him up with all sorts of extras.

Last winter he moved to Phoenix, and he wasn't able to get his Woodstock landlord to return his $1,000 deposit. Actually, the deposit should have been only one month's rent (about $600-700), but the landlord had been able to wheedle the extra deposit out of him. I urged him to seek assistance from the Housing Authority, which had subsidized his rent, but they apparently were unable to obtain it. Then I urged him to contact Prairie States Legal Services, which provides free legal assistance to Seniors and to selected others. He may not have called them, although he should have.

I encouraged his sister, who helps manage his financial affairs, to contact the Office of the Illinois Attorney General, and on Tuesday she wrote that he had received his full $1,000 refund!

So the moral of the story is - Never, never, never give up!