I'll Have to Outlive Gloria

For close to fifteen years now, I've been getting phone calls and letters trying to collect on the debt of a woman who has listed me as a relative for purposes of getting credit. I've confirmed this with both a state student loan agency and a phone company. I'm getting a new round of calls. Which leads me to ask how do collection agencies make any money given how they seem to be unable to track down a senior citizen who owes money?

Seriously, over the years I got her middle name (which rhyme with Pantsis) and approximate age. This was enough for me to track her down to get information about her--if not her current whereabouts.

And yes, a lot of addresses are on the web for her. She has clearly moved around a lot.

But how difficult can it be to track down one senior citizen? How do collection agencies make any money at all given their apparent inability to track down this woman?

I've given up talking to these people. They claim they'll remove my name and number from their documents. But somehow when a new agency gets her account, my name and number slip back in.

Honest to God, I'd tell them where she is if I knew.

But no, my name and number are never erased. I assume it is easier to sell a debt contract with a lead, eh?

Heck, I once returned a letter to sender saying she is not at my address and shortly thereafter noticed that somebody had searched my web site for her name--apparently to see if I was lying and one could find plenty of posts about this woman.

Good grief, this has been going on so long that she is listed as a possible relative of mine on at least one web site that sells data about people!

What kind of super genius spy-level woman is she? Does she have disguises and safe houses all over the greater Metropolitan Ann Arbor Area? How does she evade this manhunt? I've seen The Fugitive. Tommy Lee would have found her years ago!

Yet this woman remains more elusive than Osama bin Laden was.

So I have learned to hate this woman. With a passion. If I had to choose between having SEAL Team 6 nailing Kim Jong Un and this woman being frog-marched into a court house, I'm not sure how I'd pick.

I've considered a lawsuit, but how would I collect a judgment, eh? I've seen how this works for her.

I've sadly concluded that I can't even dream of running into this woman and confronting her because as a senior citizen, all she'd have to do is start loudly crying and I'd look like the Grade-A a-hole rather than the subject of her scams and debt evasion.

So I wait for her to die. She's older than I am and hopefully the stress of her life on the lam is greater than the grief she causes to my lifespan.

Although if I see her name in an obituary, I'll be mighty tempted to go to the funeral and stick a thermometer in her mouth to make sure she's actually at room temperature.

Because at this point I put nothing beyond her capabilities.