A generous community has helped ease the financial pain inflicted on 83-year-old Alvina Popke by a unscrupulous scam artist.
On May 17, thinking she was helping the Renton Salvation Army, she turned over $6,000 – much of her savings – to a woman she had met in the parking lot at Fred Meyer on the Benson Highway.
In doing so, the woman told her, Popke would prove to the woman that she had plenty of money and wouldn’t keep the generous donation the woman would make to the Salvation Army. The woman supposedly had come into a large inheritance on the death of her brother.
But the woman, who said she was on her way home to Africa that evening, took Popke’s money, with the help of another woman who was part of what’s called a pigeon-drop scheme.
Popke told her story in the Renton Reporter on May 31 in hopes that she could help others avoid such a scam.
“It’s a big loss to me,” she said last week.
The actual crime occurred at a Bank of America branch on Kent’s East Hill, so the Kent Police Department are investigating. Popke said there’s little hope the police will ever catch the two women who scammed her.
A fund was set up at US Bank to help raise money to offset Popke’s loss. About $665 was raised from 10 donations.
Because the donations are kept private, Popke can’t thank each donor personally.
But, she wants everyone to know the money will help.
“I am very grateful,” she said. “We want to thank everyone for their prayers, their concern and, of course, their donations.”
She’ll now be able to replace some windows in her house, she said.
And, she made, with money from her own account, the suggested donation of $200 for her and her daughter, Gayle Richards, to attend the recent Salvation Army “Need Knows No Season” fundraiser. Richards has been helping her mother handle the account set up at US Bank, as well as help her through this difficult time.
Popke has been a member of the Salvation Army Church for a “long time.”
“I don’t know what I would do without it. It’s good for me. I need some life,” she said.
“Under the circumstances, I still have a lot to be grateful for,” she said.
Dean A. Radford can be reached at 425-255-3484, ext. 5050, or at dean.radford@rentonreporter.com.
