The phantom interview

 
  Grandmother Delaney receives a telephone call from her grandson, Eugene. He attends a college in the Midwest and expects to get his degree in December. In the meantime, the boy explains he has a golden opportunity to interview with an executive of one of the Fortune 500 companies in New York City.
  “I don’t have any real nice clothes to wear to the interview,” explains Eugene. “I need a nice business suit, and the plane fare costs more than I can afford with my allowance. But $1,200 should cover the cost of everything and I’m almost positive I’ll get the job.”
  Grandmother Delaney is impressed with her grandson’s maturity in gathering all this information together in such an organized manner. She sends the $1,200 to Eugene by a Western Union money order exactly as requested.
  Weeks pass and there’s no word from Eugene.  Grandmother Delaney calls his cell phone and leaves a message: “Eugene -- please call, I’m anxious to hear how you did on your interview with the man in New York.”
  A few hours later Eugene returns his Grandmother’s call. “What interview?” the boy asks.
  “The interview with the big shot in New York that you were sure was going to hire you!” Grandmother says.
  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Grandmother,” says Eugene.
  At that moment Grandmother Delaney feels cold chills running up and down her spine. She knows she’d been duped. After calling the local cops and the campus police the old woman realizes she’s the victim of a scam.
  The original call from Eugene was not her grandson, although he sounded very much like him. Investigators familiar with the routine said her grandson and some of his buddies probably were overheard talking in a beer joint.
  Using Internet sources, the scammer was able to find the grandmother’s phone number and a little bit about the grandson. From a few scraps of information the scammer was able to built a promising -- although totally false -- tale of success for her grandson.
  Will Grandmother Delaney get her money back? Not very likely. The scammer, with her $1,200, is in the wind.

Retired and having fun -- but where?

  The London Times reports that the parking lot attendant at the Bristol Zoo worked faithfully, seven days a week for 25 years. Then one day he failed to show up for work.
  None of the zoo employees know the attendant’s name. They referred to him only as “Guv,” a British custom for an official whose name no one knew.
  Zoo officials contacted Bristol town officials to ask for a replacement for the missing parking lot attendant. Townsmen said the attendant was employed by the Bristol Zoo. “Not so,” says the zoo director.
  Zoo people check the attendant’s booth and the ticket machine but find nothing that will lead to finding the absent attendant or the name of his employer.
  Then it dawns on Bristol officials: “If Guv doesn’t work for the zoo and he doesn’t for the town -- then who on earth does he work for?”
  A light switch goes on when the town realizes that Guv has pocketed the parking lot money and flown the coop. Rapid calculation reveals that with parking fees  averaging £400 per day for cars and buses the estimated total is $660 a day in US dollars.
  Didn’t anybody check to see where the money was going? Apparently not because the town thinks Guv works for the zoo, and the zoo people thinks he works for the town. Nothing was suspicious until Guv didn’t show up for work.
  Where’s Guv now? Your guess is as good as anybody’s. Maybe he’s on the coast of Spain, or Argentina, or anywhere on Planet Earth. If you do the math you’ll find that Guv’s retirement stash comes to a handsome sum of more than $6 million U.S. Not bad for 25 years of faithful -- or unfaithful -- service.

“I ain’t your Grandma!”

  Bad Nose Babcock walks into the convenience store late one night. He hangs around the drink boxes in the back while three customers pay for purchases and leave.
  Now Libby, the 68-year-old assistant manager, is the only other person in the store. Bad Nose walks up to the check-out, and puts a Diet Coke on the counter. Libby starts to ring up the sale when Bad Nose pulls out a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
  "While you're in that drawer, gimme all the money so I don't have to kill you!" says the gunman.
  "Go ahead, take it all," says Libby, "it don't matter none to me, it ain't my money." She takes money out of the register and lays it on the counter as Bad Nose scoops up the cash and stuffs it into his pockets.
  The bandit starts backing away and warns the old lady, "Don't you go callin' no cops, 'cause if you do, I'll come back and smoke you — you got that, Grandma?"
  Apparently the word "Grandma" lights a fuse in Libby's temper. Reaching under the counter, the old lady yells, "Grandma? Grandma? Who the devil you callin' Grandma, you idiot?"
  Having said that, she levels a .38-caliber pistol at Bad Nose, closes her eyes and squeezes off a single shot. When she opens her eyes, Bad Nose is on the floor writhing in pain, holding himself between the legs.
  Libby calls the cops. A short time later, Bad Nose is gathered up by the cops and paramedics, loaded into an ambulance, and carted off to the emergency room. Libby is trembling as the cops interview her for the incident report.
  They tell her she probably won't get in any trouble for shooting an armed holdup man. "You're lucky he didn't shoot when you reached down under the counter," one cop says.
  "Maybe so," says Libby, "but I ain't too old to shoot his skinny butt, and I sure ain't his Grandma!" The cops are very careful not to say that dreadful word. They speak to Libby using only the word, "ma'am." The cops do, however, confiscate Grandma's gun as evidence until after Bad Nose Babcock's trial.

“Nobody should have to do this more than once!”

   
    Anybody who saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan" should have known my friend Jack Truluck. On June 6, 1944, Jack drives one of the landing craft that drops our guys on Omaha Beach at Normandy. After he unloads his "passengers" and before he can back away from the shoreline, a German artillery shell blows up his Higgins boat.
  Jack survives, but his only choice is to swim ashore. Unarmed and with bullets flying everywhere, Jack crawls over dead bodies in the surf. Then he hears the familiar high pitched whine of a landing craft.
  Turning around, Jack sees a shipmate piloting another Higgins boat, getting ready to pull away from the beach. The friend signals Jack to swim out to his boat. Jack does, but as he climbs aboard his buddy's landing craft, another German shell blows that boat into little bits.
  Here's Jack, for the second time that day, making an impromptu landing on the beach at Normandy. "Nobody should have to do this thing more than once," Jack says of his bizarre wartime experience. Eventually Jack is evacuated to a hospital ship. His wounds are non-life threatening.
  Back at home, after the war, Jack pursues a career as a newspaperman. When I meet Jack he's an investigative reporter for The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C. Now his hair is white and there's less of it. But what a guy is Jack Truluck. His instinct for getting to the heart of a news story is unparalleled.
  Jack retires from The State paper and in the late eighties takes a job as public information officer at the Police Academy. During his later years, before cancer gets him, Jack rarely talks about D-Day. But when he does, he gives a great big Truluck smile and tell you he never worries about anything.
  He'd say, "I got blown out of two landing crafts at Omaha Beach -- after that everything's gravy!"

Bank robber’s poor judgement

  Last week a guy we'll call Dewey robs a California National Bank branch in Pasadena. Bank officials don't say how much money he got, but he leaves the bank with a plastic bag loaded with the green stuff.
  As the bank bandit heads out on his escape route, a witness to the holdup decides to follow him but at a safe distance. The bandit must realize he's being tailed, because instead of going directly to his car (later found by the cops) he runs for several blocks then darts into an office building.
  At that point the pursuing witness calls 911 to report the bank robber's progress. Moments later several squad cars pull up in front of the office building and a cadre of cops fan out.
  Shortly after the cops' arrival the bank robber appears at the edge of the roof of the parking garage next to the office building. The bandit is five stories up. Now there are cops on the ground below him and cops in the parking garage behind him.
  The witness says the bandit has nowhere to go. But the bandit makes a choice nobody anticipates. He can throw up his hands and surrender up there on the roof.
  Not this guy! Instead, he leaps off the edge of the roof and plummets five stories down to a concrete slab on the ground.
  We may never know what was on this guy's mind -- whether he thought he could make the jump or if this was an act of suicide.
  He doesn't succeed at either -- escape or suicide. Instead, he breaks both legs and various other bones in his body and remains in critical condition in a hospital.
  Cops scour the parking garage and recover every dollar of the bank's money hidden under a car on the third floor.

Kidnapping hoax reported to 911

  A 38-year-old mother of three, locked in the trunk of a car with her nine-year-old daughter, calls 911 on her cell phone. Philadelphia police catch the call and an interstate drama begins.
   A Bucks County prosecutor in suburban Philadelphia says the woman called 911 and claimed she’d been rear-ended and when she got out of her car to check for damage, she and her daughter were forcibly kidnapped by two men and stuffed into the trunk of another car.
  Claiming she was calling from inside the trunk of the kidnap car, the woman says, “I’m scared to death and have no idea where they’re taking us.”
  The prosecutor says the woman also used her cell phone to call her husband and give him the same story that she gave the cops. Hours later police find the woman’s car parked in downtown Philadelphia with no damage.
  A task force of police from seven agencies manage to track the woman’s cell phone location to a motel at Disney World in Central Florida.  
  The local branch of the FBI, Orange County sheriff’s deputies, and Disney World Security find the woman in her motel room with her daughter -- both unharmed. The woman is arrested and the daughter turned over to her biological father.
  From the time the woman first reported the phony kidnapping until she is arrested in Florida some 18 hours pass. Seven law enforcement agencies are involved in the investigation.
  Investigators say the woman flew to Orlando using a borrowed driver’s license. Authorities are concerned about the failure of two TSA officers at airport security to spot the I.D. belonging to someone else.
  The woman was returned to Bucks County and is now released on payment of ten percent of the one million dollars bail set by the local court.
  The woman is expected to be arraigned for making a false report and identity theft -- both misdemeanor crimes. Other charges are pending, according to authorities.
  The reason for the bizarre escapade is still not known or has not been reported by authorities.

Drunk driving in Norway is expensive

  Norway DUI laws don’t come even close to U. S. DUI laws by comparison. Ask the Norwegian driver who was arrested last October near the airport for Southern Norway’s Kristiansand.
  Svenson was stopped, according to a Reuters report, when the cops suspected he was driving under the influence. Svenson’s blood alcohol content was reported by technicians as .188 percent. That’s more than the .02 percent legal limit (in Norway). Svenson was drunk even according to South Carolina’s standards.
  The interesting thing about Norway’s dealing with driving under the influence is their standard for levying fines. In the United States fines are stated in the law as it’s written. Norway sets the fine according to current income in addition to factoring in overall personal wealth. Did that get your attention? It got mine.
  Norwegian court records say Svenson’s income is 751,769 kroner. That’s equivalent to $117,000 a year in the U. S. But Sven’s personal wealth is 228 million kroner which is $36.6 million in U.S. dollars. Now we’re talking money.
  The court fined Svenson 700,00 kroner or $109,000 U.S. for drunk driving. In Svenson’s case, that sounds like a mere slap on the wrist. His license was revoked for two years and three months according to Norway’s drunk driving formula. If you’re in a tavern in Norway, my advice to you is to ask the bartender for a “Shirley Temple.” That’s old movie slang for a non-alcoholic beverage.