Adele Ferguson: Rotten, contemptible folks find victims at all levels

IT’S BAD ENOUGH that the cream of the security crop in our government, the Secret Service, dallied with prostitutes on a trip to Colombia while making sure of the safety of our soon to arrive on a visit president.The more worrisome thing to me, however, was the stupidity of the agent or agents who questioned the fee charged by his lady for the night, thus blowing the lid off the whole thing by triggering her complaint to the local cops.

Prostitution is not against the law in Colombia so she had as much of a right to complain as if she were a taxi driver stiffed for his fare by the American visitors.

I thought Secret Service guys were smarter than that.

And the ones involved appear to have been Secret Service veterans, not rookies who didn’t know any better.

A further scandal has been revealed wherein senior managers of the General Services Administration joined in a four-day conference in Las Vegas that cost taxpayers over $800,000 for expenses and entertainment including private parties in their rooms.

BUT DON’T RESERVE your anger just for what government employees in D.C. are doing on your nickel.

Your fellow American citizens of various ages have behaved in just as rotten and contemptible a manner.

Try some of these: Authorities say the son of a good friend of the victim of a gunpoint robbery at her house in Pierce County helped plan the attack.

Prosecutors charged Bobby Ray McKinner, 26, with one count each of first degree robbery, burglary and unlawful imprisonment.

He told two of his buddies how to get into the 67-year-old woman’s house and gave them an inventory of property to steal.

The two held her at gunpoint and robbed her but one was caught by police when he was seen carrying a large screen TV out of the house.

His partner and McKinner were also picked up and charged.

Olga Fedorovsky, head of the Literacy Council of Kitsap County, confessed to embezzling nearly $20,000 by forging a cohort’s name on checks she cashed and credit card advances.

Her lawyer said she suffered from depression and dealt with it by trips to the gambling halls of the Suquamish Clearwater casino.

AN 83-YEAR-OLD Seattle man who was not named in the newspaper story was cheated out of $89,000 by a telephone caller who identified himself as the man’s teenaged grandson Ryan.

bIn his first call, he needed $4,300 for bail after being arrested for thinking and driving in Georgia where he attended a wedding, he said.

After subsequent calls during the next few days the old man sent an additional $84,000.

It stopped after his real grandson called and said he was not in trouble and was in the Seattle area, all the time.

The embattled superintendent of Darrington School District agreed to resign, a year and a half after another school manager died of a cocaine overdose in his house.

KOMO-TV reported Larry Johnson will resign April 30 under a settlement with the school board where he agreed to drop his lawsuit in return for his contract being bought out and other monetary awards.

Johnson was cleared of wrongdoing though it was revealed he was having an affair with the dead woman and a hearings officer directed that he be reinstated in his job because the district did not establish sufficient cause for termination.

In February, a 25-year-old woman and her 19-year-old son went door to door in Navy Yard City, Bremerton, offering to do repairs and yard work for payment in advance. One woman wrote $19,000 in checks to the pair before they vanished without doing any work. The woman had a record of similar bilking in Hawaii and the cops hope to catch up with her.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)