Tag Archives: security

Living Will

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I pass along something amusing (and rather sad) to readers who think.

This morning, I got an e-mail from my cousin Kathy who lives back in New York. Kathy teaches school and is one of the family’s more thoughtful members. (Sadly, she’s related by marriage, so it doesn’t help us score points in our bloodline.)

Kathy often passes on funny things she receives via e-mail. Unlike a lot of folks who forward stuff to me, the ones I get from Kathy that aren’t related to menopause or the stupidity of men are often quite well written and funny. This one was like that. I want to share it with readers here.

Sadly, I don’t have a by-line for the piece and don’t know who wrote it so I can’t include credit for it. I did not write it. If anyone out there knows the original author of this piece, please let me know. And obviously, since I respect copyright, if the author has a problem with me sharing this, he should contact me so I can remove it. Frankly, if I’d wrote it, it would be…well, right here. And I’d be proud to put my name on it.

That said, here it is. Read it and think.

Below is an example of a LIVING WILL you may want to draft in light of recent events:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn’t be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I’d be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers – oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on – to start calling me “Bobby,” as if they had known me since childhood.

* I’m not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a “Bobby’s Law” that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the “Bobby’s Law” idea doesn’t work out, I want Congress – especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in “less government and more freedom” – to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country’s attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I’d want President Bush – the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas – to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best “to err on the side of life.”

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF’s care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what’s best for me, I won’t be in any position to argue.

A Birthday Flight

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I take a 90-year-old woman, her 88-year-old brother, and her son on a helicopter tour.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately from people in Scottsdale, interested in helicopter tours. There’s a charter company down there named Westcor Aviation (associated with the Westcor malls and other real estate ventures) and my very first flight instructor, Paul, works for them as a pilot. They occasionally get calls from people who want to charter a helicopter and get “sticker shock” when they hear the rate: $1,500 per hour. So when asked to recommend other operators in the area, Westcor has begun recommending me, along with the others.

Doing flights out of Scottsdale isn’t exactly good for me. I ask $495 per hour for flights originating in the valley, with a one-hour minimum. But I don’t charge people for the amount of time it takes me to get from Wickenburg to the valley and back again. So I don’t really make much money on these flights. But they’re good experience and they do help pay for the helicopter. And they give me an excuse to fly.

I did one of these flights on Sunday. I’d gotten a call during the week and made arrangements with someone named Brad to fly his grandmother on a tour of the area for her 90th birthday. He’d fill the other two seats, too, and he’d make sure the total weight was below 650 for the three passengers. I just had to meet him at Scottsdale Airport at 10:00 AM.

This worked out well for Mike and I. Mike had gotten Greyhawk Members Club tickets to see the FBR US Open in Scottsdale, which wasn’t far from the airport. The tickets got us entrance to the event as well as entrance to hospitality tents scattered around the course. We could eat and watch the golfing from comfortable, shaded seats — all for free. We figured we’d head over to the course when my flight was finished.

We arrived at Scottsdale Airport about 40 minutes early and got a great parking spot right out in front of the terminal. We went into the restaurant for some weak coffee and a bite to eat and I spent some time reviewing the Phoenix Terminal Area Chart to see where I could take them. At 9:50, I headed out to the lobby to wait for my passengers. There were three young people there and one of them approached me. It was Brad.

I looked at him and his two companions. “I thought you said it was for your grandmother.”

“She’s on her way,” he said.

I tried to review the route I’d planned with him, hoping it would meet his approval. He didn’t seem to care. “She wants to see the Superstition Mountains,” he said.

I wanted to take her up the Salt River, which would take us near the Superstitions but not over them. I didn’t want to fly over or around the Superstitions. It’s rocky, dangerous terrain and I didn’t think it would make for an interesting or comfortable one-hour flight, given the wind conditions and the descending clouds out that way.

“She doesn’t know she’s doing this,” he added.

A while later, his grandmother arrived. With about twenty other people. She was a petite 90-year-old woman. They escorted her up to the window where she could see Zero-Mike-Lima parked on the ramp. “That’s your birthday present,” someone told her.

She was thrilled. They quickly sorted out who would be flying with her: her brother, who I can accurately describe as a little old man, and her son, who was considerably larger. I don’t think their total weight even reached 500 pounds. I escorted them outside to the security door and told them that only one person could accompany us through the gate to take photos. Out at the helicopter, I gave them the safety briefing. I put the birthday girl in the front, her brother behind her, and her son behind me. As I warmed up Zero-Mike-Lima, my passenger’s entourage watched from behind the glass partition.

We departed to the southwest to remain west of Runway 21. Although the controller told me he’d call my turn to the east, he was so busy with other traffic that I was clear of his airspace before he had a chance to. I passed north of Camelback, then headed east toward the Salt River. I skirted the north edge of Falcon Field’s airspace, then continued up the Salt River Canyon.

The desert was absolutely beautiful. I’d never seen it so green. And all the lakes we flew over — Saguaro, Canyon, Apache — were completely filled with water. The sunlight through the low clouds made a patchwork of shade over the entire scene, illuminating some hillsides and rock formations and shadowing others. The Superstitions were clearly visible, just below the clouds, to the south of us, so my passengers got to see what they wanted to, and so much more.

About 0.6 hours out, I made the turn to come back, using my GPS to give me a more direct route. The goal was to make the flight exactly 1.0 hours. Soon we were heading toward Fountain Hills. I looked at the clock on my instrument panel. It was nearly 11 AM. Is it possible that I’d overfly Fountain Hills just as they turned on the fountain? It was. We were still about three miles out when the water started to rise. It was an added bonus for my passengers to see it from the air.

We approached Scottsdale Airport from the west. Fortunately, the controller wasn’t nearly as busy as he’d been when we left and we had no trouble approaching the airport, crossing the runway, and landing right where we’d begun.

My passengers were very pleased with the flight. I was too.

And when the woman’s daughter handed me a check, a little voice in the back of my head reminded me, “And they pay you to do great stuff like this, too.”

Truth vs. Fiction

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How I get another life experience proving that truth is stranger than fiction.

First, the background info.

My company, Flying M Air, is the Fuel Manager at Wickenburg Municipal Airport. This means that I’m required to provide warm bodies to pump fuel into aircraft, sell pilot supplies and refreshments, answer questions, and keep the terminal building presentable. They do other stuff, too, but that isn’t worth going into for the purpose of this tale.

I have a staff of three employees, all of whom are semi-retired with some kind of aviation experience. Gary is a pilot who has thousands of hours of experience in all kinds of airplanes. Jeff is a pilot who is now building his own airplane. Alta is one of only five women in the world qualified to sit in the engineer’s seat on a 747.

Unfortunately, when one or more of these people need time off, the others can’t always fill in. That means I have to work at the airport. Trouble is, when I’m working at the airport, I’m not writing books. When I’m not writing books, I’m not earning a living. So it’s my best interest to find additional warm bodies to keep on staff.

That’s half the background.

Now here’s where it starts getting weird.

Last January (that’s 2004), I get a phone call from the Wickenburg police at 1:30 AM. They tell my half-asleep brain that someone has just called them, reporting that he witnessed three men fueling and then loading C-4 explosives into a C170 (that’s a Cessna taildragger) at the airport. When asked, these three men told the witness that they were flying to Washington to blow up the White House.

I replied to the police that they really didn’t have much to worry about because it would take a Cessna a few days to reach Washington. (Yes, I really did say that. They probably have it on tape somewhere. Remember, I was half asleep.)

The officer started asking questions and I started waking up. The gravity of the situation started to sink in. After 9/11, reports like this at airports are taken very seriously. The police tell me what they’d been told. And I realize that the story didn’t match what I knew to be fact: Namely, that the plane couldn’t have fueled up at 6:30 when the witness claimed because I’d fueled the last plane at 5:30 PM and had locked up everything (including the pumps) at 6 PM when I left for the night. I suggest that perhaps the whole thing is a hoax.

Two more phone calls from the police that night before I’m finally able to get back to sleep.

A few days later, I’m at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, loitering outside the Peachpit Press booth. My cell phone vibrates. It’s the police in Wickenburg again. They tell me that the case has been resolved. That the witness has been charged with submitting a false terrorist report. They tell me the witness’s name, but it doesn’t ring a bell and doesn’t stick. They give me the report number in case I ever want to look at the report. All I hope is that I’m not called as a witness in some trial.

Time goes by. It’s now March. Two of my airport staff members are away at the same time and the third can’t work. I wind up working four days in a row at the airport while my editor anxiously awaits more chapters of my QuickBooks book. Enough is enough. Time to get more warm bodies.

I get a call from a guy named Bob Doe. (That isn’t his real name, but it’ll do.) He says he talked me to me several months ago about a job at the airport but I wasn’t hiring back then. Am I hiring now? Sure, I tell him. Go to the airport and fill out an application.

He comes by the airport while I’m working. He’s in his mid thirties. His resume shows all kinds of airport experience. But he’s working as a stocker in the supermarket. (Actually, he isn’t. But he does have an equally unrelated part-time job.) He’s very enthusiastic and I’m sucked in, desperate for more warm bodies so I can get back to work. I think I notice alcohol on his breath, but I could be imagining it. I tell him to come by the next day for training.

“So I got the job?” Bob says.

“Well, I want to see how you do at training,” I reply evasively, trying hard to convince myself that it isn’t alcohol at 11 AM.

Bob leaves and I think about it. I’m not sure about him. I voice my concerns to one of the medivac pilots stationed at the airport. He tells me to go with my gut feeling.

I call one of Bob’s references and learn that he worked there for two months. Human resources tells me they fired him for not showing up for work and not calling. I can’t track down the other recent reference because he didn’t include a phone number. I decide to put off training for another day when Mike, my significant other, will be around to help train him.

The next morning, I call him at 8 AM. I get his answering machine. I tell him not to come in until the next day. At 9 AM a taxi (yes, a taxi — the only one we have in town) rolls up and he gets out. I tell him about the message. He says he never got it. He says he must have been in the shower. I tell him I can’t train him that day. He gets a little nasty, pointing out that he’d taken a cab. I tell him I’ll pay the cab fare. He tries to get me to change my mind and let him stay. I tell him about the reference checks and tell him I need phone numbers for all of his references. I then pay the $14 round trip cab fare and send him on his way.

Bob calls later with phone numbers for two personal references. The other reference I’d tried to contact had gone out of business. (How convenient, I think.) He gives me the name of a supervisor at the other reference. After he hangs up, I leave a message on the supervisor’s voicemail.

The next day, Bob shows up in a cab again. He’s 10 minutes late. He sweeps in like he owns the place and immediately begins leaving the things he brought with him — backpack, coffee mug, etc. — around the terminal. I hand him over to Mike for training; I have a catering order to handle and two helicopter rides to give.

Later, when things calm down, I can see there’s a problem with this guy. He has a superior attitude that just doesn’t fit into our cosy little establishment. He doesn’t give a hoot for the little plane pilots and complains when the only jet we service that morning leaves without giving him a tip. (We don’t get tips in Wickenburg.) His possessions are scattered all over the terminal. And I can tell that even Mike — that deep well of patience — has had it with him.

When I leave to get lunch for Mike and me, I take Bob home (he was scheduled for training until 1 PM). On the way, he tells me how great it feels to be working at an airport again. He wants to know how many hours we’ll be giving him so he can quit one of his part time jobs. (I didn’t realize that he had two jobs.) I tell him I don’t know yet, that I’d have to let him know.

Back at the airport, Mike and I compare notes. We decide that Bob’s warm body just isn’t the right temperature for us. I get Mike to break the news to him on the phone. I write a check for $24 to cover the promised training pay and put it in the mail.

The next day, Mike is at the airport when Bob storms in, looking for me. He tells Mike that he spoke to me that morning and that I said I’d be at the airport at noon. (A blatant lie.) He tries to say that we’re not hiring him because of age discrimination. Mike points out that all of our employees are at least 20 years older than he is. Mike tells him we need someone more interested in the small plane pilots. He doesn’t get it. He keeps going on about how experienced he is dealing with jets. Mike tells him we get 50 small planes in for every jet that lands so that his experience isn’t worth much to us. Bob storms out, slamming the door behind him.

And yes, there was definitely alcohol on his breath.

Today, Mike and I are having lunch at a local restaurant. Bob comes up in conversation. Something triggers a switch in the back of my mind and I recall the January C-4 in a Cessna incident. Suddenly, Bob’s name seems more familiar than it should.

I stop at the police station on my way back to my office.

“Remember that case in January when the guy reported C-4 being loaded into a Cessna to blow up the White House?” I ask a woman behind a grill.

The woman nods with a strange smile on her face.

“Just tell me,” I say. “Was the person who reported it Bob Doe?”

She nods again.