Post #255529 by danlovestikis on Tue, Sep 19, 2006 4:01 PM

Hi Everyone, just got home from work and checked my emails and TC messages. I have emailed Barbara many times in the past few days requesting the Birthday Party Photos and an explanation. The depth of her deception was amazing in detail. Right down to saying that Andy had to be in a wheelchair for his party and that a nurse from the hospital had even attended.

She told me very personal details of how she felt about the loss of her husband. I can't believe how horrible this deception was. I lost friends to the Vietnam war and I too work in a hospital with children with cancer. Dan's dad has just been found to have terminal cancer and we are treasuring the days he has left. All of these facts I shared with her and she and I suffered together...NOT.

I was asked how I met her. It came about because Benzart was carving a necklace for Dan and I. When Hewey asked him for a necklace for Barbara Ben contacted me to see if he could send ours to speed up the process. I said of course. I asked for her address. Then Dan and I packed up three (we later sent a fourth) big boxes of tikis, from a carved tiki drum to coco joes to mugs, I went out and bought games and magnets, sculpey clay in bright colors, I even won another Pocketiki from England and had it sent to him. James then got involved and sent gifts along with the magazine, then he got his friends involved.

When I sent the boxes I included my email address and said if I could help to let me know. Meanwhile I started asking my best tiki buddies to send boxes too. Everyone was so happy to send these surprises.

I live in California so I'm not close to Barbara other than with what's occurred here. She wrote the most beautiful thank you and then like Hewey posted she described her situation. I told her that Andy was going to have a lot of fun things to see and play with because I was going to send another box and that I had friends that were going to send things too. She was very happy and delighted.

Then I thought why not include TC. The reason I decided that was based on her angry thread. I hadn't seen it until after my friends and I sent boxes. I kept trying to find it and it wasn't until I tried typing Barbara necklace that it came up. I thought this poor woman, she must have become so angry because it was one more bad thing in a life of tragedy. So I thought lets heal her, lets have TC people send things and all the anger she has at being told to get off TC will go away and it will eliminate that hurt.

When the TC member response was so incredible it made my day, it made my week, then yesterday it all crashed and burned. It is so horrible that she would cash in on saying all these types of lies when so many families are living them day to day. I had told Dan's dad what we were doing and he was so proud of us.

I think that Barbara should be ashamed and take every single item we donated to the Cancer Society in her area. If someone knows of one close to Barbara they ought to have them call her and offer to pick everything up. Barbara should take photos of them picking it up and photos of it displayed for sale. Then she should write a huge apology to us and then exit TC never to be heard from again.

It's not over until there is some satisfaction for those of us who do not lie and deceive.

Thank you to each and every one of you who wrote to say you didn't hold me responsible. I appreciate those notes so much because I'm really beating myself up over this. I tried so hard to stop more boxes from going out.

I do feel blessed in that I have seen and met so many more TC members who are angles on earth. So Caring and kind. Dan and I feel like our best friends on this planet have come to us through collecting and loving tikis. You are all just the very best of friends.

Now I'm smiling again, more to come, Wendy

[ Edited by: danlovestikis 2006-09-19 19:20 ]