Deputy Whitfield read me the name on the back of the card in a low, careful voice, and I wrote it on my pad with the pen already trembling in my hand. Lorraine Dacey. And a phone number with a Havasu area code. Under it, in the tiny ballpoint letters of Mr. Castellanos, the words, ask her about the others. I had worked the Mohave County console for twenty two years, and I knew the name Dacey. She ran a business called Golden Hours Companion Care. She had a booth at every senior expo and a smile on every billboard on Highway 95.
I put the deputy on hold and pulled up the computer records. Over four years, my center had logged six calls from elderly residents in mobile home parks, each of them involving a “companion” sent by Golden Hours who later vanished with checkbooks or jewelry. Each time the case had been closed, because the seniors were confused, or the companion could not be found. The common thread was a phone number. It was the number on the back of the ace. Mr. Castellanos had been keeping a card for a week in his undershirt pocket, and had marked the one name he had found.
Detective Nina Alvarez took the case within the hour. By evening she had a warrant for the office of Golden Hours, and by midnight she had the files. Rudy was a “caregiver” in name only. He was the nephew of the wife of Lorraine, and he had worked for her for three years. Her pattern was simple. She placed her people in the homes of lonely old men and women, stayed until the money came, and moved on. Seven seniors, that we knew of. Mr. Castellanos was the only one who ever found a way to call.
An ace of spades slid across a card table gave one dispatcher the evening to bring an old man home in Lake Havasu City.
Mr. Castellanos gave his terms from the stretcher, with an oxygen mask at his chin. “Deputy, the card goes to the detective. The checkbook goes to my granddaughter. And Rudy goes where he deserves.” He said it in a firm, thin voice. Then he turned his head toward her, and I heard through her shoulder microphone what he said next. “Mija, I played a hand every day for two days, and I let him win, because he needed to feel clever. I knew somebody would come. That ace is the only thing I did not lose.”
Rudy had tried to run. Sharon Whitfield told me afterward that when she turned to help the old man, Rudy bolted for the back door of the trailer, snatching the checkbook off the table. He got as far as the gravel yard of the park. There he met the park manager, Gus Delgado, a retired Marine, riding his golf cart on its evening rounds. Gus saw the lights of the deputy, saw the man running, and drove the cart straight across the path. Rudy slammed into the front fender and went down in a cloud of dust. The deputy had the cuffs on before he finished cursing.
The paramedics treated Mr. Castellanos for heat exhaustion and dehydration. He had lost eleven pounds in two days. His granddaughter, Marisela, drove through the night from Phoenix, and sat by his bed in the hospital in Lake Havasu. When he woke, she was holding his hand. “Abuelo,” she whispered. “Your hearing aid called the police. I set it up for exactly this.” He smiled, a thin dry smile. “Good girl,” he said. “I told them it was just a hearing aid.” She kissed his forehead, and cried, and laughed.
Lorraine Dacey was arrested at her house on Sunset Drive the next morning. She said she was only a business owner and that her workers acted on their own. The ledgers said otherwise. The detective found handwritten lists of seniors in six parks, with notes on their savings, their relatives and their hearing aids. A grand jury indicted her on twenty one counts. Six of the seven other seniors were located and checked on. Two had already been drained of their savings. The others were warned in time, by deputies who knocked on doors that same week.
The money consequences were hopeful. Of the four hundred thirty thousand dollars in the account of Mr. Castellanos, all but thirty nine thousand was recovered, because the bank flagged the checks. The county seized the assets of Golden Hours, and the judge ordered restitution to every victim. Rudy was sentenced to seven years. Mr. Castellanos recovered at the house of his granddaughter in Phoenix for a month, and returned to space forty one in October, with a new swamp cooler and a card table he refuses to use.
In the name of his wife, Guadalupe, who passed in 2023, Mr. Castellanos started the Lupe Castellanos Fund, and I sit on its board. It pays for air conditioners, repairs and wellness visits for seniors in mobile home parks in Mohave, La Paz and Yavapai counties. In the first year we installed ninety four units. A woman in Bullhead City, eighty eight years old, cried when the cool air hit her face. She said she had not felt a breeze in her own home for six summers. The technician said it was the best part of his job.
In November, when the snowbirds returned to the park, I drove out on a Saturday with a box of donuts. Mr. Castellanos was at his new card table in front of the trailer, with his hearing aid in, shuffling a deck. A circle of neighbors sat around him in folding chairs. “Teresa,” he called, “come play.” I sat down. He dealt me a hand of gin rummy, and I won, and he laughed so hard he had to take off his glasses. Then he slid an ace across the table. “Keep it,” he said. “For luck.” I keep it in my wallet, behind my badge number.
