Wednesday, October 1, 2008

APOA Lends a Hand


On September 24th, Teresa Barrera parked her vehicle on the street, outside an elementary school in south Arcadia. Teresa locked her car and entered the school for only a moment. Teresa returned to find her car burglarized. The thieves made off with her purse and contents. Since the burglary, Teresa also learned that she has been victimized through fraudulent use of her name and credit information.

During follow-up investigation, one of our Investigators and APOA Vice-President, Mike Hale, learned that Teresa’s purse held a Nintendo game belonging to Teresa’s six year old daughter, Jasmine. He also found out that Teresa is a single mom working toward obtaining her teacher’s assistant certificate through Pasadena City College. Teresa is unemployed and had saved for quite some time in order to purchase the game for her daughter. After the theft, Jasmine was heartbroken and told her mom that she could not understand why someone would do such a thing to their family.

The APOA Board heard of the incident and decided to lend a hand. The APOA has purchased a Nintendo Game, a carrying purse and two new games for Jasmine. Teresa, Jasmine and younger sister, Tatiana, came to the Department today to meet with APOA President Troy Hernandez and VP Mike Hale. Jasmine was given her new game and Teresa was presented with a $250 gift certificate to Ralph’s Grocery to help as well. This was a nice surprise for both of them.

Pictured above are Jasmine and Tatiana with Troy and Mike behind.
UPDATE: Terry Miller from the Arcadia Weekly and Robert Hong from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune were kind enough to cover the story as well. Take a look on their links.

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