Letter to Attorney detailing Don’s recent history and mine

When I was originally looking for counsel last September I had spoken with Mr. Hearn but never met with him personally. I wish I had. Instead I chose a firm where I knew someone and eight months later I was in worse shape than when it all began. Enclosed are the letters that resulted in my Attorney quitting, so that you will know what I want in representation up front. I went back to interview Steve Hearn, Esq. last week and he said that my opposition had come to him and that as a result, he could not represent either of us.

I have already consulted with Al Cazin (the second husband to Debbie Ponton. Her previous husband was Gene Holloway who owned the Sea Wolf restaurant and faked his own death for the insurance. Debbie is an exotic cat owner with a pet black leopard. Her brother, Lance Ponton, later became a substantial donor to our sanctuary in his business name of Cordoba) and Fletcher Belcher who both said that they think this case would be too difficult and time consuming for them to take on.

I want dedication. I want someone who is interested in doing what is right and not just lining their pockets. I want someone who knows the law and knows what they are doing. In this present case I am involved in, the children of my missing husband, by a former marriage were afraid that their dad was spending all of their inheritance on caring for the 200 animals that we have here at WildLife on Easy Street. They sided with their mother to accuse their dad of dealing dishonestly with his wife during their divorce in 1989.

In court, the girls, who were all book keepers for Don until our marriage, said that their father had hidden assets from their mother and that he was worth much more than he represented to her and that therefore she was entitled to another million dollars. She had asked for the divorce when she fell in love with another man and she had told Don she wanted a million dollars and no contest and Don complied. We waited over a year to be sure she would be happy in her new marriage before Don and I were wed 10/10/91. When we married I set up a Trust for Don’s children for all of his assets that were his alone. Four years later Don’s ex-wife had run out of money and with the help of her daughters sued Don for more.

Don has an adopted son who spends most of his time in jail and drug rehab and Don had disowned him in 1992. When his daughters did this to him he disowned them and had barely spoken to them in two years. Don and I have been working in real estate together since 1981 and I have done his evictions, foreclosures, quiet title suits and replevins since 1987.

I’ve completed 84 Circuit Civil cases in Hillsborough County alone. I am not an attorney. In fact I only have a tenth grade education, but I study other people’s work and then piece together from the best work I find. Don and I began WildLife on Easy Street in 1992 because we wanted to give back something for all that God has given us. When we modified our Trusts in 1995 we added to the successor beneficiaries WildLife on Easy Street so that when we both died the sanctuary would always be well funded. By this time Don didn’t want anything to do with any of his children nor his ex-wife so he removed them as successor beneficiaries from all of the trusts, except for the PSRL Trust that I had originally set up for them in 1992.

In September 1996 Don asked me to dissolve the children’s trust because he didn’t want anything going to the people who had lied about him for money. I did not dissolve their trust, nor amend it, because I was raised with strong family values and believed that Don would get over it one day. He asked me several times to write them out of his Will. Because he was so against lawyers he didn’t want any part of his money going to probate attorneys so his Will was a very simple document that basically shifted all assets to the Trusts. Each of us executed identical Wills and Power of Attorney in the others favour.

In April 1997 I noticed that Don was acting peculiar. I thought he was just getting older and a little senile (his father died early and quite insane). I started watching him more closely and discovered he was secretly doing a lot of things that were really out of character for him. He could barely read and write and any deal he made, he would bring to me to check out first. I would do the title searches, prepare the assignments or deeds and advise Don as to whether or not the deal was secure.

Don was the wheeler dealer and could negotiate like nothing I’ve ever seen. We made a great team. Now he was being conned by people he knew were thieves to give them large sums of money ($60,000.00 to $100,000.00) with no collateral and instructions not to tell me or I would blow the big score he was going to make.

Someone commented to me one day that it must be a huge burden to operate a refuge as large as WildLife on Easy Street and have to provide full time care for an Alzheimer husband. I read every book I could find on the subject and was mortified to see my husband and my best friend since I was 19 to fit every symptom. By June I was trying to have him see a specialist. The first week of June Don was in Costa Rica and I was having some scrap dealers haul off some of the junk in the yard.

Wendell Williams, is one of the people who was taking advantage of Don and saw this as the perfect opportunity to get Don upset with me (Don was a pack rat and I can’t even tell you how many tons of scrap he had accumulated). They called Don in Costa Rica and Don called me infuriated and said when he came home he was going to turn all of the cats loose. These are Tigers, Leopards, Lions etc. Don was having these outbursts more and more frequently, so I just talked calmly with him until he seemed rational again.

Nice thing about Don. He gets really mad and in five minutes he’s over it. I went down to the Courthouse and requested a restraining order, just in case he should come home and blow up again, I wanted to be able to have him removed from the refuge before he could turn too many cats loose. The intake clerk asked if Don had threatened me and he never had, so I told them “no” and they said they could not issue a restraining order unless he had said he was going to kill me.

When Don came home he was fine one day and just boiling mad for no apparent reason the next. This went on for a few days and I was still trying to get him to go see a doctor. One day after one of his unpredictable explosions as I was trying to calm him back down, he asked me why I thought he was crazy. I told him that his saying he would turn his precious cats loose I knew something was not right with him. I told him that I had gone to see about getting a restraining order but that because he had not threatened to kill me they wouldn't even take my application. I told him I just thought that he needed help and that there are drugs available now to make him think clearly like he did before.

At first he said he could cure himself, with his mind, but then once he was completely calmed down he asked me to set an appointment for him. I did and our secretary, Anne McQueen had a fit. She told Don I was trying to rail road him into a nursing home so that I could steal all of his money. This was Don’s story to me and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. They must have argued about it a while, because finally Don said that Anne said he had to see her Doctor first and that if her doctor said there was nothing wrong with Don, then he would see the Alzheimer specialist, Dr. Gold, to appease me. Her physician, Dr. Blasini was a general practitioner, who had a nurse who had been in the U.S. for only 2 weeks and still couldn’t speak English. She told me that she had never given one of these tests before and that it took a very long time because she had to read the instructions that she complained were not in Russian her native tongue.

I doubt that Don understood a word she said. Dr. Blasini diagnosed Don with Bi-Polar Disorder and sent him to have a MRI at St. Joseph’s. He also recommended a psychologist in his building. Don and I went to the MRI and the psychologist together. Don had an appointment to return to the psychologist a week or so later. By now we were into August 1997.

Don was taking a truck full of hospital beds and clothing to Costa Rica to sell and was going to drive it to Miami to the port on August 19. On Monday morning, August 18, 1997, right around daybreak, Don called my name from the bedroom door and said “Be sure they get that box truck running, because I’ve got to leave early, early, early in the morning to get it to the port on time”.

We had 26 lots for sale and had spent Friday, and Saturday getting signs ready to send with one of Don’s friends to post them. Monday morning I was at the courthouse filing papers until around noon. When I returned home our secretary was on the phone with Kenny Farr one of our workers asking where Don was. Kenny Farr said Anne was really acting freaked out, so I talked to her. She was shaking and asking where Don was and I told her I didn’t know. She kept saying how worried she was about him and I reminded her that Don often disappears all day without a word to anyone, but that he always show up to help feed the cats at night. I told her I’d have him call her as soon as he got home.

Feeding time came and went but Don didn’t come home. After dark I started to get worried but remembered he often went to the Bayside Auto Auction and wouldn’t get home until after 10 pm. When that came and went, I started looking for him.

Don was always crawling in dumpsters and had recently fallen in one and couldn’t get out until enough trash was thrown in for him to climb out on. He was too embarrassed to yell for help. I checked his regular route and every place else I could think of. He had been shopping for an ultra light so I checked the airport where my plane was hangared and Tampa International. I couldn’t find him anywhere.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.

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Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.