 in the studio with Davis Media Access. Today I'll be your host. My name is Wendy Wilcox. I'll be joined by Kevin Clark from the Yolo County District Attorney's Office, and Elaine Roberts Messer, an attorney from Davis, California. Today we'll be talking about the Senior Resource Fair and Crime Prevention Fair that will be held on October 26th in Woodland, California. And we'll get started with you, Kevin. Go ahead and tell us about what we can expect at the Senior Resource Fair. Well, the Senior Resource Fair, I think it's just a really great thing for the community. The reason we have Elaine here as well is she's participated and helped promote the Senior Fair in the past, and it's just a great event because seniors in our community are a vulnerable population. They're people we need to look out for, we need to protect, and just the fact that there's so many people that are trying to scam them, victimize them, commit fraud against them, those are some of the things we'll talk about today in the studio, and I think what's important is that we just realize how important the event is. It's a Yolo County event, so it's hosted in Woodland, but it's not just for Woodland, it's for everybody, it's for Davis, it's for West Sacramento, Winners, Esparto, the rural parts and Woodland as well. So it's a great event and some of the resource, I'll just list off a few of them. Since it is a resource fair, we have caregiving resources, consumer help resources, crisis, services, education, financial assistance, healthcare, housing, legal assistance, support groups, transportation, and since it has that Crime Prevention Fair title in it, local, federal, state, law enforcement agencies are there. It's a great opportunity for seniors to come and voice their opinion. Ask for change, report a crime. It's been a great opportunity for crimes to be reported and be investigated. And so that event's actually gonna be this Friday coming up. It's in a couple of days. Friday the 26th at the Woodland Senior Center and that's at 2001 East Street in Woodland. And so just down up Highway 113 from Davis and coming up. It starts at 9 a.m. right, 9 a.m. to noon. There's just a lot of great things, free onsite shredding, document shredding, no limit. So bring that document shredding. We can't stress enough how important it is to take care of those documents. I mean, just shred those documents, get rid of them. That's where people are gonna scam and try to get information to commit fraud and identity theft. We've got free continental breakfast that's being catered by the Californian in Woodland. Excellent. And we have free raffle prizes, so. Excellent. Okay, Elaine, let's start with you and I wanna hear from you about why this event is so important for seniors in our community. Well, you know, I have an 88 year old mom who regularly calls me almost two and three times a week to explain how the IRS called her and said that she was in danger of being arrested or she gets something in the mail or she answers the door and somebody's trying to scam her that way. So she's constantly calling me about this and I, of course, I'm an attorney. I'm a consumer advocate so I know exactly what to do. However, most seniors don't have an attorney on tap. So they have to find this information out somewhere and this resource fair is an excellent place to start to find out how you can prevent these scams so that you don't get scammed. But also, if you have been scammed, tell someone so that they can steer you to the right resources, that's so important. The fact of the matter is statistics show that in 2017, there were 4% of the calls that should get telephone calls are fraudulent. Next year it was up to 30% and by next year it'll be 45%. That's how bad it's gotten. Right, and they're so relentless. They call it all hours of the day and they try to catch them off guard quickly so that they react in a way that would be beneficial to scammer. Right, they prey on their vulnerability really and their emotions particularly. That's very common. Yeah, and another thing to add to that is just the fact that they're maybe the senior, if they're lonely at all, they might wanna talk to someone on the phone. And if they don't know where to reach out to or how to reach out, that's why it's important to go to this fair and find out who you can reach out to for help. They sometimes feel suckered into it or pushed or pressured into something where they have to give money up front and then they say afterwards, it felt like it wasn't right but I just went ahead with it anyways. Those are the reasons why we wanna protect our seniors. And in the aftermath they feel embarrassed. They feel ashamed of themselves for being convinced to do something that it seemed too good to be true. We all know if it seems too good to be true you really need to ask and second guess it and then they're afraid to report it because they think some people look down on them or shame them more. Right, exactly. And since it's one of the most under reported crimes, senior financial elder abuse, embarrassment is usually the number one reason. Absolutely. We go and we talk to the community, we educate them and want to empower them to come forward but most of the time they're like, I cannot believe I fell for that scam. They're so embarrassed and they don't need to feel embarrassed. You know what? You never have to feel guilty or feel embarrassed if you're a victim of a crime. Always come forward. We're here to support you but that's what they feel sometimes and then it goes unreported and a lot of times they're out of a lot of money. Oh yeah, absolutely. And it's gone forever. Well, I think the scary part is a lot of the businesses, legitimate businesses are getting into the scamming business and that sounds terrible to say but as an example, my dad had early onset dementia and what ended up happening is he paid for subscriptions for like 50 years out because they kept sending them their subscriptions every month, you know, knowing that he was going to ask and they got it there. Exactly, and so this is the kind of thing you have to really watch all the time. You have to really, really watch. Yes, for sure. Okay, so Kevin, can you tell us about some of the unique services that they can expect to see at this year's fair? Well, just like we've been talking about that access to law enforcement, it's so hard to be able to go and just talk to investigators, talk to local police officers from your jurisdiction, get to know, it might not even just be scams and fraud going on, but it might be crime prevention in your community. What are some of the hot topic or hot button issues or things that you might be concerned with? You know, law enforcement do wanna hear about that. They wanna hear what some of your concerns are in the community, otherwise they won't be able to change those or seek change. That's important. Another thing that's so important is some of the civil legal assistance. We have the Yolo Conflict Resolution, Legal Services of Northern California, other advocates like Elaine that are gonna be there to help out and discuss some of these issues. You don't know if, okay, sometimes it might not be a crime that we can solve. It might be a civil dispute or civil matter. What better way than to go and talk to the people that are there. An expert, right. Experts ask them, is my case, is this issue something you can help me out with? And maybe some of that money that's been lost could be recovered in a civil action. And they might even qualify as a non, since those are nonprofits for free or reduced cost legal assistance. So those are important things as well. The other things besides the services that are offered, I mean, just that the onsite shredding is amazing. It's great that the breakfast and then some of the raffle prizes. Wendy, you wanna talk about some of the raffle prizes? So some of the raffle prizes that we have, we have opera house tickets. We have a lot of local businesses that have donated gift cards. So it can be whatever the recipient wants it to be. Target, some of the retail stores in the area. And then also many of our vendors have volunteered to bring something. So it might be something geared towards what service they offer, whether it's in-home care services or whatever it is. So there's a lot of those that we're gonna be bringing. Last year we had some pasta basket that was really had a lot of different food and cooking utensils. And it was a really beautiful basket. Yes, it was very nice. So, and there's a whole bunch. It shows great support from our community. Businesses, vendors coming in. And they wanna give this away for free. And they wanna give it to the seniors. They want to be able to interact with them and talk with them and have that little perk for them too. A lot of them, there's a shredder. There's other things that can help them out too for security-wise or just give certificate to go out and enjoy themselves too. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I know that you've attended in the past, Elaine. Can you share with us some of the interesting experiences that you have seen just to give the seniors an idea of what to expect? Yeah, sure. One case we had that came forward was a woman who had been the victim of a grandparents scam. And she got a call. Someone said they were calling on me. I have her for grandson, who they said was in jail in Barbados or something like that. And they needed $2,000 wired immediately to get him out of jail. She made the foolish mistake of naming her grandson, so of course she thought they knew who it was and they were legit. So she, within a few hours, wired the money only to find out a few hours later that her grandson was perfectly happy and at home and safe. Not in Barbados or wherever it was that the scam was going on. She tried to go back to Western Union and get the money back. Of course, it's already been wired. It's gone. It's gone. And of course, as we've talked, both of us have said this, that she felt very ashamed, stupid, foolish. So when she came to us, she was kind of reluctant to say anything at first, but we kind of pulled the story out of her. And we said, don't be ashamed. You're not the first one, you won't be the last one. But you need to tell someone and let us tell you how you can prevent this from happening again. And that's when we told her, you don't give out the name of your grandson and then you ask him, what's the name of my grandson? That's a simple way to avoid it. Equipped him with this. Yeah, exactly. We had another case in which a woman was, she was very, very low income, just barely making ends meet. And somehow she'd been talked into this life insurance policy that she could not afford. It was ridiculous. So we sat down with her and talked about her finances and got her to see that she really needs to cancel this policy because it's just way beyond what she can afford. So it's helped like that. It seems to maybe a, you know, someone who's middle age, oh, this is ridiculous. But you know, seniors, oftentimes, they don't see the force for the trees sometimes. It's very hard. They get isolated, they get lonely. They're not quite sure. They come from a background where, you know, you do a deal on a handshake, that sort of thing. And so they're very vulnerable. Very, very vulnerable. Very trusting. Very trusting, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes confused. Yes. Yeah, what they used to remember very easily is now not as easy to come up with, even the spelling of a word, perhaps. And so those types of things that are coming at them so quick as these cameras do. Exactly. I mean, I had a case where some woman, her husband, had dementia and the call was at midnight and he was sold a timeshare. And he has dementia. I mean, really? Yeah. So. Okay. And some of the other things, I mean, this is great community support and some support where the attorneys will take on cases like yourself and other ones in the community from the DA's office. One of the things that DA Jeff Rice really feels strongly about is being proactive. We just talked about this Western Union case. This isn't a case that we're gonna be able to solve and resolve. Right? There's this international element to it. It's hard to trace. Right, exactly. It's gonna be difficult to find a suspect to charge. Right. So what we've been doing is getting out, being proactive, giving talks at senior centers. Right. Educating and empowering the seniors so they know how to get to the fraud hotline. Get to our website, report, talk. If we can't resolve or initiate an investigation, either get it to the local police department. What we wanna do is refer them out to community resources as well. Right. Which is so important. And so that's why it's important to call the fraud hotline and just be there so that we can kind of support and help them through it. Even if it's calling a lane or calling someone else and saying, hey, there's this kind of weird case we got going on. What do you think about this? And seeing sometimes if someone would take on a cause. Absolutely. And along that line, I know that you have a lot of different resources and advocacy groups that you work with. Is there any that you'd like to mention here today? Just to give them an idea of our views and idea of what is available to them at their fingertips. Yeah, there's a lot of resources out there. The first place I'd start is your senior center. The major cities in Davis have senior centers. Davis has one, Westsac, Woodland and Winters. I know all four of those have them. Okay. There's a plethora of information at your senior center and that's where you probably ought to start. There's also 211. That's a good way of getting information. If you're 65 or older, they will automatically hook you up with senior link, which is all the services for seniors. So those are two really good places to start, but you can also find information out or even register complaints about what's going on in community with your local senior commissions and also the Yellow County Commission on Aging and we also have the Yellow Healthy Aging Alliance. So all of those are good resources. As Kevin mentioned, there's legal services in Northern California, which also might be able to help. So, and even businesses sometimes can help, like Comcast has a way that you can stop robo calls. So, and your banks have different things that you can do. So, and all of these. Fraud prevention. Almost all of these services will have a representative at our senior fair. So. Oh, excellent. On that, I'd like to say thank you for watching today in the studio with Davis Media Access. We hope that you'll join us at the 2018 Senior Resource and Fraud Prevention Fair.