Oct 16, 2008 12:22 PM
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New York, 5:42 AM
Wed Feb 10
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Unfortunately no one is protected from this catastrophic financial crisis. Your money will always be taken from you! Just ask Teresa Escamilla, a 47-year-old woman living in a crispy brown corner of the wasted and ruinous San Fernando valley. First of all, her house just burned down in that out of control wildfire they've got going on over there. So yes, like so many foreclosed upon before her, Ms. Escamilla is without shelter. But wait! There's more awfulness! She also, like so many who invested in precarious stocks or stashed their money in crumbling banks, has lost her entire life's savings. She kept $12,000 in a shoe box in the trailer. Which burned down. Her money, you see, went up in flames:
47 year old Teresa Escamilla says she had $12,000 in cash tucked away inside a shoe box, which she stored in her closet. She had saved the money for five years working two jobs, one as a nurse's assistant, with hopes of buying a home of her own one day. But, that dream went up in smoke when flames tore through her home on Monday, leaving behind only ashes.
The mobile home Escamilla has rented for the past three years was one of 38 destroyed when the fire ripped through the Sky Terrace Lodge mobile home park in Sylmar.
"I don't feel like doing anything except staying on this little bed," Escamilla said Tuesday while resting on a donated cot at an evacuation center at San Fernando High School.
"It hurts so much," she said. "So much sacrifice so I could have something a little better."
Escamilla says she was working an overnight shift when the fire broke out early Sunday morning and was kept away from her home by firefighters.
When asked why she didn't put the money in a bank, Escamilla says he felt the money would be safer where she could see it.
So if that's not the most awful and shitty story you've heard all day, I don't want your life. Can we organize a collection or something for this poor lady?
Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.
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