By Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times.
MARIE-THERESE CONNOLLY is using the prosecutorial skill she honed fighting nursing home fraud to add dimensions to the public’s awareness of the widespread problem of elder abuse, including highlighting the costs to society of financial, physical and psychological mistreatment of older adults.
“Elder abuse is ubiquitous,” Ms. Connolly, 54, a former Justice Department prosecutor, said. “But we are not connecting the dots and realizing that the economic costs are high. Few people realize the huge implications for Medicare, Medicaid and family programs.”
She has been working — writing federal legislation, testifying and prosecuting cases — for years, but a grant last fall from the MacArthur Foundation recognized her efforts in the area and gave her the financial freedom to reframe the issue on her own terms.
Despite the occasional highly publicized case like the one involving the actor Mickey Rooney, who told Congress he had been mistreated by relatives, or the conviction of the heiress Brooke Astor’s son on charges of defrauding her and stealing millions of dollars from her, the biggest challenge is that aging is something that everyone wants to ignore, Ms. Connolly said.
“We need to talk about this,” she said.
She decided to write a book, but not about the many examples of how older people are exploited or mistreated.
“The engine of the book is going to be the people on the ground who are doing amazing things to help older people who are suffering from all these different kinds of abuses,” Ms. Connolly said of the book, which she said would be published in spring 2013. With no coordinated national approach, “the social workers and others who are trying to help are forced to invent the wheel over and over,” she said.
Protecting the elderly is not a top national concern, she said, although 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease, and large numbers of baby boomers are in or approaching their 60s, a period when they become more vulnerable.
Ms. Connolly, an energetic mother of three, did not set out to become a champion of rights for the elderly. As a newly minted lawyer out of Northeastern University School of Law, an early assignment was prosecuting civil fraud cases at the Justice Department.
Several years later, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional watchdog agency, uncovered widespread nursing home abuses. That prompted the Justice Department to set up the Elder Justice and Nursing Home Initiative to, among other things, pursue fraud against older adults. She was named to lead it in 1999.
She left the post in 2007, becoming a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington research organization, and founding the nonprofit group Life Long Justice to help detect abuse of the elderly and find solutions. In 2010, Congress passed the first federal legislation, the Elder Justice Act, which she helped write, to address such abuse and exploitation.
Despite the law and efforts to shed light on the problem, the toll on victims remains vast and grim, she said.
Just making sure that the people who come into contact with older adults, including doctors and social workers, are trained to distinguish between accidental bruises, which are common among older adults, and marks that are inflicted by someone else would be an important step, she said.
Ms. Connolly also wants people to understand the economic toll of abuse, noting that studies show that abused elderly people “are more likely to be admitted to a nursing home, for example, and far more likely to suffer from increased mortality and morbidity.”
When financial, physical or other abuse means that an older person cannot live independently, taxpayers pick up the bill for costly acute, intensive or long-term care via Medicare or Medicaid, she said.
Financial exploitation alone costs victims $2.9 billion annually, according to a 2011 MetLife Mature Market Institute study. Ms. Connolly said that the actual cost of abuse could be much greater, but no comprehensive study had been done.
A major drawback to public awareness, she said, is the lack of research, especially in the areas of intervention and prevention. It is difficult to pinpoint the precise number of cases of mistreatment and abuse of older people, she said, because abuse takes many forms, can be hard to detect and can occur at home or in nursing homes and other institutions.
Citing surveys and studies over the last decade, Ms. Connolly estimated that several million older Americans suffered abuse each year. But she said, “It’s very hard to put a finger on the prevalence.”
To arrive at more precise figures, she is working with some other specialists on the elderly to research the various aspects of abuse and to find financing to support the effort.
Her no-strings $500,000 MacArthur award helps make up for the fact that she has not drawn a salary since she left her federal job — something her family has taken in stride although her older two children are in college. Her husband, Daniel Kohrman, is a lawyer with the AARP Foundation and works on issues involving older adults as well.
But Ms. Connolly says she knows focusing public attention on abuse of the elderly is not going to be easy.
“Despite the tide of aging baby boomers, people are still far more aware of child abuse and domestic violence than they are of what happens to an older neighbor or relative,” she said. “Elder abuse is still a national blind spot.”
Link to story.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Conservatorship is meant to protect, but in Tennessee, it sometimes destroys
Just two years ago, 80-year-old Jewell Tinnon was living comfortably in the Edgehill house she and her late husband had bought and paid for years earlier.
Tucked away in the home on a cul-de-sac off 13th Avenue South were a life’s worth of possessions, her prized Sunday church clothes and her diamond rings. Parked outside was her 1995 low-mileage Pontiac.
But all that was before a petition was filed, without her knowledge, in Davidson County Probate Court to protect and conserve her life, health and assets.
Today, Tinnon, now 82, lives in a one-bedroom public housing unit watching a television donated by a friend. There is little furniture. Her house, her car, her jewelry and all her possessions are gone, sold off at auction. A large chunk of the proceeds — $36,000 in fees and expenses — was used to pay the lawyers who handled the process.
Tinnon’s plight, a Tennessean review has shown, is not unique. For Tinnon and others, records show, conservatorship, a court process intended to protect those judged no longer able to care for themselves, has proved to be a path in the opposite direction.
Stripped of the right to make even the most basic decisions about their life, health or finances, some of those placed in conservatorship have watched their life’s savings — everything from their homes to their clothes — swallowed up by legal and other fees.
The situation has drawn the attention of national elderly and legal organizations fighting guardianship and conservatorship abuse and sparked an ongoing effort to change states’ laws to provide additional safeguards.
Some who claim their conservatorships were mishandled are fighting back.
After a woman who was trying to get out of a conservatorship complained about how her case was handled, the Nashville judge who handles such cases instituted new procedures in his courtroom.
And Tinnon? After obtaining additional medical exams to prove her mental capacity, she has filed a lawsuit seeking $1.6 million in damages from her former attorney and the organization that had all her possessions auctioned off.
The story of her 14 months under court control offers a window into the power of the court and its processes that can supplant an individual’s wishes. And how swiftly a life can be turned upside down as a result.
Grandsons filed petition
Tinnon came to Nashville some 60 years ago and was a cook for transportation companies for much of her working life. She and her husband bought their three-bedroom home in the 1980s, eventually owning it outright. Her husband, an Army veteran, and her only son both passed away years ago. She has two grandsons and a sister living in Georgia.
For Tinnon, the process that would eventually cause her to lose her home and possessions began in late August 2010 when the two adult grandsons filed an emergency petition in the 7th Circuit Probate Court asking Judge David “Randy” Kennedy to place their grandmother in a conservatorship.
The seven-page petition filed by the brothers Kim and Terry Patrick warned that Tinnon’s monthly checks and bank statements were “being removed” from her mailbox by third parties.
Still worse, the petition warned, Tinnon had recently been admitted to a local hospital “with hallucinogenic complaints of seeing bugs and other insects crawling around her.”
The petition included no medical records or doctor’s certification of her condition, although by then she had been transferred to a nursing home for rehabilitation related to weakness in her legs.
According to the two grandchildren, they learned Tinnon was incapable of handling her own affairs when an insurance agent called to inform them that their grandmother had failed to pay her insurance premiums “and this was very uncharacteristic.”
Kennedy, the sole judge to regularly preside over such cases in Davidson County, approved the emergency petition on Aug. 24, the same day it was filed, and appointed an attorney to investigate the matter and report back to him before a Sept. 22 hearing. The two grandsons were appointed temporary conservators authorized “to make all reasonable and necessary decisions on behalf of the ward (Tinnon).”
Tinnon later said that her grandsons had little to do with her in recent years until they filed the petition. One of the brothers contended, however, that he was trying to look after his grandmother, and she was being difficult. The Tennessean was unable to reach the other brother.
On Sept. 9, 2010, 16 days after the original petition, Tinnon was first informed of the fact that she had been placed under conservatorship, she said.
Tinnon testifies
Two days before the scheduled hearing and a week after Tinnon was first informed of the conservatorship, Nashville attorney Karl Warden filed a motion with the court asking that he be appointed as the attorney to represent Tinnon. Kennedy approved that request.
Warden told the court that he became aware of Tinnon’s case when he was contacted by staffers at the nursing home where she was a patient. Ed Hogan, administrator at Donelson Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, where Tinnon was then a resident, said privacy laws barred him from discussing matters involving patients.
Warden reported to the court that Tinnon told him “she was perfectly capable of making her own decisions and made it clear she was afraid” of the grandchildren already appointed to protect her interests. He also said Tinnon asked him to represent her.
Tinnon’s current attorney Michael G. Hoskins said, however, that Tinnon did not request Warden to come to the nursing home and that he showed up there unannounced.
Warden did not respond to multiple phone messages requesting comment. But a local television station, WSMV Channel 4, quoted Warden late last year as saying that he felt sorry for Tinnon.
On Nov. 15, 2010, nearly three months after the original petition, Warden took Tinnon to Dr. Stephen D’Amico for a medical examination. D’Amico signed a report stating that he believed Tinnon was in need of a conservator, records show.
Though the actual report has been sealed, other court documents cite its conclusion that Tinnon suffered from “memory loss consistent with Alzheimer’s type dementia” and “needs care 24/7.”
Warden told the court that Tinnon objected to a conservatorship, but later said Tinnon asked that, if the judge appointed a conservator, it be her niece or the Greater Nashville Regional Council.
After listening to Tinnon testify that she did not want a conservatorship or her grandchildren to be her conservators, the judge on Dec. 2, 2010, moved ahead and appointed the Greater Nashville Regional Council. In doing this, he removed the two grandsons, acknowledging that they had “an adversarial relationship” with their grandmother.
'Don't sell my stuff'
The Greater Nashville Regional Council is a large agency whose board is composed of dozens of area public officials and which is funded with state, local and federal money. It generally serves as a clearinghouse for regional planning and other efforts related to growth and economic development in 13 counties, including Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, Stewart, Williamson, Wilson and Montgomery.
One of its arms, the Area Agency on Aging and Disability, provides programs and services for the elderly, including a guardianship program.
The program handles 50 to 60 cases at any given time, which are assigned by judges throughout the 13 counties, said Sam Edwards, executive director of the council.
In a motion on March 18, 2011, the council stated that a sale of Tinnon’s home and possessions was in the best interest of the estate. Tinnon, who had been receiving monthly Social Security checks and veteran’s benefits related to her husband, did owe some money. Her earlier nursing home care had cost up to $1,000 a month.
But other debt also had accumulated, primarily lawyer fees for the conservatorship and insurance and tax bills for her residence.
Edwards declined to talk about the Tinnon case because it’s in litigation. But the Greater Nashville Regional Council has said in court filings that it has acted appropriately and noted that its actions were approved by the judge.
That approval came on April 1, 2011, when Kennedy authorized the auction and sell-off of Tinnon’s possessions, including her house, despite her pleading otherwise.
“They didn’t have to do that,” Tinnon said. “I even told Judge Kennedy in court. I said, ‘Don’t sell my home. Don’t sell my stuff. I worked hard for it.’ ”
But sell they did.
All possessions sold
Tinnon’s car and a life’s worth of possessions were sold for a little over $2,600. Her house, then assessed for $150,200, was auctioned off for $83,000. It is now back on the market for $144,500.
An inventory filed with the court shows items sold ranged from boxes of unidentified goods sold for $4 to a sewing machine sold for $52.50 to her 1995 Pontiac sold for $2,050.
Tinnon said every stitch of her clothes and four diamond rings were among the items sold off.
Kim Patrick, one of the grandsons who filed the original petition, said in an interview with The Tennessean that his intention was to protect his grandmother and her assets but that disagreements between him and his grandmother overcame those efforts.
Asked what he thought of the final outcome, Patrick said emphatically, “They done her wrong.”
Tinnon’s lawsuit accuses Warden, her former lawyer, of agreeing “in direct contravention to his client’s wishes, to have the Greater Nashville Regional Council appointed as Tinnon’s conservator.”
And it alleges the council “breached its fiduciary duty when it undersold Tinnon’s real estate and personal assets. As a direct result … Tinnon is now living in public housing,” the complaint states.
The council “could have saved Tinnon’s home and assets by allowing her to move back into her home under the care of her niece,” the suit charges.
“She told them that they might as well shoot her dead if they took her house away,” said her lawyer Hoskins. “They did it anyway.”
Hoskins contends records of the conservator-ship show that Warden eventually billed Tinnon’s estate for services he provided days before he had even met her.
States take closer look at laws
Some states are taking a closer look at the laws regarding conservatorship.
Ed Boyer, a Florida attorney and head of the National Academy of Elder Care Attorneys, said that several states have shifted conservancy standards to maximize the autonomy of those being placed in a conservatorship and to reduce or eliminate reliance on a simple medical assessment.
As a result, he said, conservatorships in those states have imposed limits on the powers granted to guardians and thus avoid an “all-or-nothing approach.”
“There is a trend toward a greater recognition of a person’s autonomy,” he said.
Read the rest of the story here.
Contact Walter F. Roche Jr. at 615-259-8086 or wroche@tennessean.com.
Tucked away in the home on a cul-de-sac off 13th Avenue South were a life’s worth of possessions, her prized Sunday church clothes and her diamond rings. Parked outside was her 1995 low-mileage Pontiac.
But all that was before a petition was filed, without her knowledge, in Davidson County Probate Court to protect and conserve her life, health and assets.
Today, Tinnon, now 82, lives in a one-bedroom public housing unit watching a television donated by a friend. There is little furniture. Her house, her car, her jewelry and all her possessions are gone, sold off at auction. A large chunk of the proceeds — $36,000 in fees and expenses — was used to pay the lawyers who handled the process.
Tinnon’s plight, a Tennessean review has shown, is not unique. For Tinnon and others, records show, conservatorship, a court process intended to protect those judged no longer able to care for themselves, has proved to be a path in the opposite direction.
Stripped of the right to make even the most basic decisions about their life, health or finances, some of those placed in conservatorship have watched their life’s savings — everything from their homes to their clothes — swallowed up by legal and other fees.
The situation has drawn the attention of national elderly and legal organizations fighting guardianship and conservatorship abuse and sparked an ongoing effort to change states’ laws to provide additional safeguards.
Some who claim their conservatorships were mishandled are fighting back.
After a woman who was trying to get out of a conservatorship complained about how her case was handled, the Nashville judge who handles such cases instituted new procedures in his courtroom.
And Tinnon? After obtaining additional medical exams to prove her mental capacity, she has filed a lawsuit seeking $1.6 million in damages from her former attorney and the organization that had all her possessions auctioned off.
The story of her 14 months under court control offers a window into the power of the court and its processes that can supplant an individual’s wishes. And how swiftly a life can be turned upside down as a result.
Grandsons filed petition
Tinnon came to Nashville some 60 years ago and was a cook for transportation companies for much of her working life. She and her husband bought their three-bedroom home in the 1980s, eventually owning it outright. Her husband, an Army veteran, and her only son both passed away years ago. She has two grandsons and a sister living in Georgia.
For Tinnon, the process that would eventually cause her to lose her home and possessions began in late August 2010 when the two adult grandsons filed an emergency petition in the 7th Circuit Probate Court asking Judge David “Randy” Kennedy to place their grandmother in a conservatorship.
The seven-page petition filed by the brothers Kim and Terry Patrick warned that Tinnon’s monthly checks and bank statements were “being removed” from her mailbox by third parties.
Still worse, the petition warned, Tinnon had recently been admitted to a local hospital “with hallucinogenic complaints of seeing bugs and other insects crawling around her.”
The petition included no medical records or doctor’s certification of her condition, although by then she had been transferred to a nursing home for rehabilitation related to weakness in her legs.
According to the two grandchildren, they learned Tinnon was incapable of handling her own affairs when an insurance agent called to inform them that their grandmother had failed to pay her insurance premiums “and this was very uncharacteristic.”
Kennedy, the sole judge to regularly preside over such cases in Davidson County, approved the emergency petition on Aug. 24, the same day it was filed, and appointed an attorney to investigate the matter and report back to him before a Sept. 22 hearing. The two grandsons were appointed temporary conservators authorized “to make all reasonable and necessary decisions on behalf of the ward (Tinnon).”
Tinnon later said that her grandsons had little to do with her in recent years until they filed the petition. One of the brothers contended, however, that he was trying to look after his grandmother, and she was being difficult. The Tennessean was unable to reach the other brother.
On Sept. 9, 2010, 16 days after the original petition, Tinnon was first informed of the fact that she had been placed under conservatorship, she said.
Tinnon testifies
Two days before the scheduled hearing and a week after Tinnon was first informed of the conservatorship, Nashville attorney Karl Warden filed a motion with the court asking that he be appointed as the attorney to represent Tinnon. Kennedy approved that request.
Warden told the court that he became aware of Tinnon’s case when he was contacted by staffers at the nursing home where she was a patient. Ed Hogan, administrator at Donelson Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, where Tinnon was then a resident, said privacy laws barred him from discussing matters involving patients.
Warden reported to the court that Tinnon told him “she was perfectly capable of making her own decisions and made it clear she was afraid” of the grandchildren already appointed to protect her interests. He also said Tinnon asked him to represent her.
Tinnon’s current attorney Michael G. Hoskins said, however, that Tinnon did not request Warden to come to the nursing home and that he showed up there unannounced.
Warden did not respond to multiple phone messages requesting comment. But a local television station, WSMV Channel 4, quoted Warden late last year as saying that he felt sorry for Tinnon.
On Nov. 15, 2010, nearly three months after the original petition, Warden took Tinnon to Dr. Stephen D’Amico for a medical examination. D’Amico signed a report stating that he believed Tinnon was in need of a conservator, records show.
Though the actual report has been sealed, other court documents cite its conclusion that Tinnon suffered from “memory loss consistent with Alzheimer’s type dementia” and “needs care 24/7.”
Warden told the court that Tinnon objected to a conservatorship, but later said Tinnon asked that, if the judge appointed a conservator, it be her niece or the Greater Nashville Regional Council.
After listening to Tinnon testify that she did not want a conservatorship or her grandchildren to be her conservators, the judge on Dec. 2, 2010, moved ahead and appointed the Greater Nashville Regional Council. In doing this, he removed the two grandsons, acknowledging that they had “an adversarial relationship” with their grandmother.
'Don't sell my stuff'
The Greater Nashville Regional Council is a large agency whose board is composed of dozens of area public officials and which is funded with state, local and federal money. It generally serves as a clearinghouse for regional planning and other efforts related to growth and economic development in 13 counties, including Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, Stewart, Williamson, Wilson and Montgomery.
One of its arms, the Area Agency on Aging and Disability, provides programs and services for the elderly, including a guardianship program.
The program handles 50 to 60 cases at any given time, which are assigned by judges throughout the 13 counties, said Sam Edwards, executive director of the council.
In a motion on March 18, 2011, the council stated that a sale of Tinnon’s home and possessions was in the best interest of the estate. Tinnon, who had been receiving monthly Social Security checks and veteran’s benefits related to her husband, did owe some money. Her earlier nursing home care had cost up to $1,000 a month.
But other debt also had accumulated, primarily lawyer fees for the conservatorship and insurance and tax bills for her residence.
Edwards declined to talk about the Tinnon case because it’s in litigation. But the Greater Nashville Regional Council has said in court filings that it has acted appropriately and noted that its actions were approved by the judge.
That approval came on April 1, 2011, when Kennedy authorized the auction and sell-off of Tinnon’s possessions, including her house, despite her pleading otherwise.
“They didn’t have to do that,” Tinnon said. “I even told Judge Kennedy in court. I said, ‘Don’t sell my home. Don’t sell my stuff. I worked hard for it.’ ”
But sell they did.
All possessions sold
Tinnon’s car and a life’s worth of possessions were sold for a little over $2,600. Her house, then assessed for $150,200, was auctioned off for $83,000. It is now back on the market for $144,500.
An inventory filed with the court shows items sold ranged from boxes of unidentified goods sold for $4 to a sewing machine sold for $52.50 to her 1995 Pontiac sold for $2,050.
Tinnon said every stitch of her clothes and four diamond rings were among the items sold off.
Kim Patrick, one of the grandsons who filed the original petition, said in an interview with The Tennessean that his intention was to protect his grandmother and her assets but that disagreements between him and his grandmother overcame those efforts.
Asked what he thought of the final outcome, Patrick said emphatically, “They done her wrong.”
Tinnon’s lawsuit accuses Warden, her former lawyer, of agreeing “in direct contravention to his client’s wishes, to have the Greater Nashville Regional Council appointed as Tinnon’s conservator.”
And it alleges the council “breached its fiduciary duty when it undersold Tinnon’s real estate and personal assets. As a direct result … Tinnon is now living in public housing,” the complaint states.
The council “could have saved Tinnon’s home and assets by allowing her to move back into her home under the care of her niece,” the suit charges.
“She told them that they might as well shoot her dead if they took her house away,” said her lawyer Hoskins. “They did it anyway.”
Hoskins contends records of the conservator-ship show that Warden eventually billed Tinnon’s estate for services he provided days before he had even met her.
States take closer look at laws
Some states are taking a closer look at the laws regarding conservatorship.
Ed Boyer, a Florida attorney and head of the National Academy of Elder Care Attorneys, said that several states have shifted conservancy standards to maximize the autonomy of those being placed in a conservatorship and to reduce or eliminate reliance on a simple medical assessment.
As a result, he said, conservatorships in those states have imposed limits on the powers granted to guardians and thus avoid an “all-or-nothing approach.”
“There is a trend toward a greater recognition of a person’s autonomy,” he said.
Read the rest of the story here.
Contact Walter F. Roche Jr. at 615-259-8086 or wroche@tennessean.com.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Curiosity Saved The Cat
Judge Blocks Execution Of Feline
You’ve heard curiosity killed the cat. In this case, curiosity actually saved one.
As CBS 2′s Jim Williams reports, Boots was about to be put down, but an alert bank official worked to block the execution, going against the wishes of Boots’ late owner.
Boots is a friendly cat and doesn’t at all mind being held by a stranger.
“She’s lovable, playful. Though she’s 11 years old, she doesn’t act like it,” said Sandra Buturusis, the cat’s neighbor in the western suburbs.
It’s hard to believe someone wanted this perfectly healthy cat euthanized. Even harder to believe it was Boots’ owner, Georgia Lee Dvorak.
“She had a really big heart,” Buturusis. “She loved animals.”
In fact, Dvorak so loved animals, that when she died last December she left all of her $1.3 million estate to animal charities. So why put in her will that she wanted her beloved Boots euthanized, especially after she rescued the cat from an abusive home?
“She was so afraid that if something happened to her that the cat would not be taken care of and she’d go to another abusive home,” Buturusis said.
The executor of the will, Fifth Third Bank, went to court, to ask a judge to actually block Ms. Dvorak’s request.
“We brought a petition asking that the language be set aside or stricken,” said bank senior president Jeffrey Schmidt. “We didn’t want to euthanize this healthy, living animal.”
The judge agreed, and Wednesday, Fifth Third arranged for Boots to be taken to a loving home with a history of caring for cats.
“I guess you could say this time curiosity saved the cat,” said Schmidt. “We’re very happy for that.”
Bank officials also donated cat supplies and food to Boots’ new home, a cage-free sanctuary in Andersonville.
Schmidt recommends pet owners set up a separate trust for their care.
Dvorak had no family members and her neighbors are allergic to cats.
You’ve heard curiosity killed the cat. In this case, curiosity actually saved one.
As CBS 2′s Jim Williams reports, Boots was about to be put down, but an alert bank official worked to block the execution, going against the wishes of Boots’ late owner.
Boots is a friendly cat and doesn’t at all mind being held by a stranger.
“She’s lovable, playful. Though she’s 11 years old, she doesn’t act like it,” said Sandra Buturusis, the cat’s neighbor in the western suburbs.
It’s hard to believe someone wanted this perfectly healthy cat euthanized. Even harder to believe it was Boots’ owner, Georgia Lee Dvorak.
“She had a really big heart,” Buturusis. “She loved animals.”
In fact, Dvorak so loved animals, that when she died last December she left all of her $1.3 million estate to animal charities. So why put in her will that she wanted her beloved Boots euthanized, especially after she rescued the cat from an abusive home? “She was so afraid that if something happened to her that the cat would not be taken care of and she’d go to another abusive home,” Buturusis said.
The executor of the will, Fifth Third Bank, went to court, to ask a judge to actually block Ms. Dvorak’s request.
“We brought a petition asking that the language be set aside or stricken,” said bank senior president Jeffrey Schmidt. “We didn’t want to euthanize this healthy, living animal.”
The judge agreed, and Wednesday, Fifth Third arranged for Boots to be taken to a loving home with a history of caring for cats.
“I guess you could say this time curiosity saved the cat,” said Schmidt. “We’re very happy for that.”
Bank officials also donated cat supplies and food to Boots’ new home, a cage-free sanctuary in Andersonville.
Schmidt recommends pet owners set up a separate trust for their care.
Dvorak had no family members and her neighbors are allergic to cats.
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