Mailbag: In Costa Mesa, we help those in need

My town of 110,000 people just gained quite a bit of credibility in my eyes. It started with an automated call from the Costa Mesa Police Department on Sunday.

The recorded message was, “If anyone has seen an elderly woman named Esther please call us. She has Alzheimer’s and was reported missing. She is on foot.” It went on to give a description.

So out the door I went with a flashlight. I looked all over our little condo complex and went out front, and there were people all over the neighborhood doing the same. As my wife, Patty, and I were talking to some neighbors from down the road, a patrol car stopped and the officer asked if we had seen the missing woman. Patty told the officer no, but that we were looking for her.

So I hopped in my truck and start driving around looking for this lady named Esther, whom I had never met. I stopped by a local corner store and missed her by five minutes. She had been waited on hand and foot by the owner and his dad, who got her a chair and some bottled water.

They were concerned about her due to her age, not to mention the time of night. When they asked her if she wanted to call someone to pick her up, she said no thanks and walked off into the night.

These guys who own this little corner store at Fairview Road and Avocado Street are from Hom, Syria. Whenever I stop in, I always ask how their family is doing back home in the old country, considering recent events. Really nice guys.

As soon as they told me she had been there, I called the police, and they assured me that she had just been found a few blocks away. Whew. What a relief!

It was heartening to see so many people looking for Esther. The police were out in force looking but also due to the new disaster alert system we have, so were quite a few townspeople.

As I write this, Esther is on her way back to her family. I’m pretty proud of this not so little city south of Los Angeles because a lot of people who didn’t know this little old lady from Adam were out looking for her.

I guess Costa Mesa ain’t such a bad town after all.

Bob Shaffer

Costa Mesa

*

‘No budget, no pay’

The most basic responsibility of Congress is deciding how much money our government takes in and how much it spends, but Congress has only passed spending bills on time four times since 1952. It has been more than 1,000 days since Congress passed a concurrent budget resolution.

Appallingly, Congress doesn’t ever have the opportunity to discuss what our nation’s priorities are and how much should be spent on them. To change the incentive structure for Congress, a group to which I belong, No Labels, has put forth the idea: No budget, no pay!

Alice Selfridge

Huntington Beach