These schemes are very sophisticated, very smart people are falling victim to them, so I think we need to get away from the victim shaming.

Are you caring for others while working and trying to live your own life? Wondering how to find the time for your own health and happiness? Well, you’re in the right place. The Happy Healthy caregiver podcast, which is part of the whole Care Network, is the show where real family caregivers share how to be happy and healthy while caring for others. Hello and welcome.

I’m your host, Elizabeth Miller. I’m a fellow family caregiver, a care advocate, a professional speaker, author, certified caregiving consultant, and certified senior advisor. If this is your first time. Listening, thank you for being here. This is a show produced biweekly to help family caregivers integrate self-care and caregiving into their lives. Each episode has an accompanying show notes page. If you’d like more detail about the topics, products, and resources we speak about, or you want to see any of the related photos, you’ll find the show notes by going to the website happyhealthy Caregiver.com, and underneath the podcast menu, click the image or episode number for today’s show. The link for the show notes will also be in your podcast platforms episode description. Now, let’s get to it. Let’s jump into this episode.

Before we get into today’s caregiver spotlight with Art Bouker, I want to first share a couple announcements with you. First of all, if you aren’t on the Happy Healthy caregiver email list, you are missing out. Every Tuesday I share something happy, something healthy, something care related so that I can help fast track you to support and resources.

You can subscribe very easily by Going to bit.lee/HHCnews. I’d like to thank our episode sponsor today, Rare Patient Voice. Did you know that you can earn cash in exchange for your opinion? Well, Rare Patient Voice or RPV helps connect researchers with patients and family caregivers for over 700 diseases and conditions. RPV provides you the opportunity to voice your opinion to improve medical products and services while earning cash rewards. If you’re interested, join the RPV. Panel at rarepatient Voice. com/happyhealthy caregiver. I want to talk about what I recently read.

I read The Winemaker’s Wife by Kristen Harmel. This was a moving story set amid the champagne vineyards of northern France during the darkest days of World War II. The audio version of this book is very well done. I’m always drawn to World War 2 books in France, and this one was definitely more about the relationships between the Characters than it was the war itself. Essentially, the story is about layers of secrets that fester and grow and people searching for identity during a troublesome and life-threatening time. It’s perhaps a little bit longer of a listen than I would have liked normally, but I still gave it 23 out of 285 stars.

I’ll link to it in the show notes. My favorite thing that I wanna recommend is something that I want you to check out actually on Netflix. The show is a series and it’s called The man on the inside, it’s on Netflix and it stars Ted Danson. So if you were a previous fan of Cheers or Three Men and a Baby and some of his other blockbuster films, I think that you’re really gonna like this one. His character’s name is Charles and he’s a retired professor and also a widower who gets a new lease on life when a private investigator hires him to go undercover inside a San Francisco retirement home.

It’s a funny show because Charles first has to learn how to essentially be a savvy spy. This wasn’t something that he was done his whole life, and he has to also navigate all the interesting characters and the drama that happens inside a retirement community. I know this would have been a series that my parents would have loved too. I’m gonna link to the trailer in the show notes so you can check it out. And also I just saw the good news that this series got renewed for a second season. So, Definitely wasn’t the only one who this show appealed to.

Let’s meet our caregiver in the spotlight. Art Bouker cares for his mother, who is living with Alzheimer’s while juggling multiple careers, including one as a cybercrime expert. Art has over 21 years of experience in law enforcement and corrections and co-authored a book to help us protect vulnerable adults from cybercrimes and provides guidance on surviving a cyberattack. In this Episode, we chat about cybercrime and I learned about, you know, the common schemes like pig butchering and also I learned what we can do as family caregivers to help prevent a financial catastrophe in our family. We talk about art’s experience with his parents hoarding, we talk about legal guardianship and why that came about and what he learned through that process, and we also talk about art’s passion for cigars and bourbon. I hope that you enjoy the show. 

Welcome Art to the Happy Healthy Caregiver podcast. I appreciate you having me on this program. I’m excited about it. I’m excited for folks to, I think this is going to be really educational for a lot of family caregivers, and so we, we’re gonna get into all of that.

But first we, we start something off with some words of inspiration from the happy healthy caregiver jar. These are Just things I have collected over the years that have helped speak to me, to kind of put me in a good frame of mind. Um, and then I made one for my sister when we passed care from my mom, from me to her. So, so this one says, the past cannot be changed, forgotten, edited, or erased. It can only be accepted. Is that Yeah, I I. I, I, uh, I can see that, uh, in dealing with both my parents, things that occurred, you know, the happy memories of when I was a kid to not seeing those same, same Christmases, same dinners and things that were going on, and not realizing when my mother was starting to decline that some of the things she was doing, my regret is not realizing what was going on.

And I think both my sister and I felt that. I mean, we can be really hard on ourselves as caregivers, like, you know, the should have would have could have start to kind of creep up on us, but we’re human, right? And we, we make the best, you know, best decisions with the information we have at the time, but it can be hard. It’s easier, easier said than done sometimes to accept, accept what is. Yes, yes. Well, tell us a little bit about your caregiving story. Well, um, it really started probably I wanna say.

230, where I ended up uh moving in with my parents for a short period of time, I was in a transition myself and um I started to realize that, uh, that my parents were actually my father, probably more, but both of them were hoarding things, buying like preparing for a nuclear winter, canned goods. And then just my dad was fond of going to like tractor supply and buying tools, and he could have outfit several garages with the stuff he bought, you know, I remember finding a bag with like 21 pry bars in it.

Who needs 230 pry bars? I started to realize. One art, I don’t. Yeah, it’s kind of like, uh, I think I’ve got 73, but 27, all the exact kind. And he was, he was a proud, proud individual. He had been a federal examiner, he knew what he wanted, nobody could tell him anything and he was not accepted. My mom was declining far more than he was. And he was not, your mom had, did she have a cognitive? Yes, yeah, she had Alzheimer’s and she was, she was doing the things that he didn’t understand what was going on.

He thought he was taking it personal, like she was acting like, well, an example she. I told him one time, you better get out of here before my husband gets home, you know, or it’s funny, but it’s not funny. Yeah, yeah, uh, you know, my, if, if my father finds you here, you’re in big trouble, and he took it to mean she didn’t love him anymore. He didn’t understand. Yeah, and he said, you know, he felt she was going crazy, not understanding it was a decline, and It’s so hard.

It’s so, I mean, it goes and goes back to the accepting quote that we kick things off with, like, it’s not really his fault either. I just don’t think they do a great job. Maybe they’re doing a better job now really educating caregivers. So much of us, we have to kind of go out on our own and get this education ourselves to really understand that, you know, correcting them and being angry with them and, and all that, it’s, it’s their disease. Yeah, I, I remember him saying, you know, if you don’t.

If you don’t stop it, they’re gonna, you know, commit you, you, you know, you’re losing your marbles and that, and he didn’t understand and. My sister and I tried to like bring in somebody to assist him in the house, you know, and he was, he did not want a stranger in the house. He made it unbearable for him, and I remember it’s probably a year before COVID, where it was clear his condition, his physical condition was deteriorating. He just couldn’t, he couldn’t handle it anymore, and I finally said, she’s got to go and assisted living.

And it was on a, looking back, it was on Mother’s Day, and I took her there with him, and then for the next year, he was at the, he was at the assisted living every day, and he was driving at night. He wasn’t supposed to be driving at night. They were willing to take him in because he was, he was eating a lot of junk food and like his diet was, but he resisted it, and I hate to say this, but COVID was kind of a blessing because they were going on lockdown.

And I said, Dad, If you don’t move in with her, you’re not gonna be able to go. And that’s how we, how we got him into the assisted living. And uh it was a good thing. They were, they were. Glad it was a blessing for some for somebody, but to your point, like, yeah, he wanted to see her and you know, I did a show during that time where someone became a dishwasher so that they could see their husband. That was living in the community during that time, you know, Mary Daniels, so we’ll link to that episode, but, and then going back to like the hoarding art, it just came out of the blue, like your dad wasn’t a hoarder your whole life, or he would, he would buy things, but they were usually like he, he needed them.

That was like maybe he was on a project and he needed some tool. It was not buying multiple of the same thing. Yeah. My sister and I, when we went in the basement, it was like, when did, it was like, when did this happen? Both my sister and I didn’t live near my parents. I lived about an hour and a half and my sister lived 2177 hours. So, you know, we’d visit on holidays and stuff, but it was, it was amazing the amount of stuff they bought. When we, when we finally got the house cleaned out and, and be able to put it up for sale, as we were doing that, we found.

The storage lockers, 2300 huge storage lockers. 9. Yeah, and they were filled with beer mugs that dad had signed up for a beer month of the club thing, and I was like, why? And then they were stored in the basement, they were on display, and just, you know, it was that kind of stuff. Yeah, filling some kind of a void in his life. I. Yeah, and he and it. You know, I, I would, would go, you know, Subway to have that deal by like 2 sand, 2 ft longs, get one free.

Well, I mean, I could barely eat 1 ft long and he’d always want to order the extra footlong to get a free one, and I was like, who’s gonna eat it, you know, or the, I remember going, they would get, they love to go shopping, and it was like, buy, buy 2, get one free and it’s like, He’s like, you know, you’re losing money if you don’t buy that extra shirt cause you’re getting one free. I’m like, but you don’t need, you know. The deal, he was enticed by that. Wow.

And what was, how was that going through there, you know, after your folks, I guess it’s kind of self-corrected itself too when he moved in with your mom, he wasn’t doing as much shopping or did that, or did they just start getting packages all the time? Well, he kind of ended up moving in right away. It was kind of like, you need to go, they’re gonna lock down the facility. Tomorrow. He went and got a bunch of, you know, some quick stuff, but he didn’t have credit cards with him.

Uh, actually, he had, uh, I’d started taking over the finances at that point to make sure bills got paid. And so he didn’t have a credit card, and he didn’t, he didn’t need any money. They would provide food and my sister and I would send in care packages, you know, from Amazon. So he, the shopping went away. He wasn’t OK and the community, they had previously live by themselves, and they, there were a couple of friends they’d go out with every once in a while, but they’ve got.

And older too, so they were kind of isolated, and with them in the assisted living, they had activities there, they’re always doing something, they were facility they were in, my sister and I couldn’t ask for better care. Nice. Do you want to shout it out? It, it used to be called HI Senior Care, and now I believe it’s R and Senior Care. My mother’s currently there. RM senior care. Yeah, in Lisbon. OK, well, we’ll shout them out because you know what, when you find a good one, you want to know about it.

Yeah, and One of the things that they always wanted to keep them together, and at one point, my mom, she was having a series of minor strokes, mini strokes, and she ended up going into the hospital and they said she’s got to go to a nursing home. And that broke my dad. My dad was like, she can’t go to a nursing home. In fact, he, they actually arranged a visit between the two of them, and he was upset. He was like, we’re getting an attorney, we’re gonna sue.

And I thought that happened in like January, and I thought, I didn’t think my mom was gonna last, but she, she kept losing weight. But then she started gaining weight. And within, it was probably, it was about a year, they said the the assisted living said, we’ll take her back, she’s good enough for us. So she ended up moving back in with him. It was like, I remember seeing him and her, they hadn’t seen each other for 9 months because this was like also during COVID and both of them were on lockdown. Mhm.

And they were able to reunite, and, and then when my, uh, probably maybe A year later, my dad declined and they went out of their way to continue allowing him to stay there. They did not have a, they were a step down from a nursing home, and I think they they weren’t allowed to, they weren’t allowed to administer medication or there was something, and they were, they were able to keep him there. He actually passed away there, and they were, my mom and him were like in two rooms right next door to.

Well, I mean, and what, you know, nice that they bent over backwards to kind of keep them together, which is what your, your parents both wanted. Any, you know, I know at some point you mentioned like you took over the finances of, for your, your parents, and that you are an expert really in the cyber safety space, but talk first, I think you became a legal guardian for your parents. Talk us through that, like what were the signs. That made you think that that this was needed?

How did you go through this process? Who does this make sense for? Well, we actually, my sister and I actually started with the power of attorney. We had them sign a power of attorney and mom was, she signed it, but I’m not sure she fully understood, but she signed it and I took the power of attorneys with my parents to the to their bank and the bank refused to. Acknowledge they didn’t like my dad’s signature and my dad had a, he’d always signed a distinctive way for documents.

They didn’t like that. Then they questioned whether my mom had the capability to sign the power of attorney and it was no good. Yeah, so they had all their all their funds going into that bank account and I could access that bank account through a computer, but we ended up opening another bank account which put my sister and I were on that account. And we were to continue to pay bills. As my mother got worse and worse, they needed, we need to pay more to the assisted living to keep up her care, you know, uh, I think they need to have two people to handle the care increase or the cost increased, and they had enough money in the bank account, but it, it was rapidly declining, and we realized we’re gonna have to sell the house, um, and that’s when we went and got guardianship, and I had to have, um, I’d have them both evaluated uh by a psychologist, and they said they were both had diminished capacity.

And um that was an experience. I didn’t realize I had to separate the two accounts. I’d always had all their money goes going into one account and, you know, I could pay my mom’s expenses, uh, I don’t, my dad was a retired federal employee. He was, his pension was a lot more than my mother’s, so if his, her pension wasn’t enough to pay, it was all in one account. Well, the guardianship, each one of them had a separate account, and only her income went into one account and only his income went into the other.

So he could have more in his account than my mom, but I couldn’t co-mingle them. So that was, that was an experience. And just getting to all the little things like dad had bought little individual stocks instead of having like a brokerage account, like through Fidelity or something, he’d have like 1773 shares in Bob Evans, 5 shares. Wendy’s and had all these little, you know, not even getting, you know, a dollar’s worth of dividends. And of course, he wasn’t having the dividends rolled back into the stock, he was having checks mailed.

So just trying to keep up with all that. And then also I found that He was paying for some anti-virus software that was coming out of his check, out of his account. What is this, Dad? He had no idea what it was. He had signed up for it, and they just, they just kept taking the money out and I had to, I had to cancel it so this isn’t authorized. So, and while I’m going through all the dealing with them, my co-author and I were working on our book, you know, about keeping family safe, right?

Actually, it was a kind of a side thing. I’ve, I’ve been in cybercrime, but my full-time job was as a, uh, at that time as an investigator, uh, investigated civilian complaints against Cleveland police officers after retiring from federal law enforcement. I had a background in computers and my co-author and I had written a book before about investigating internet crimes, and we’re like, we need to have a book that helps the individual, and we had started off with, you know, chapter. of how do you protect your kids, how do you protect your home?

And I’m like, we need to have a chapter on protecting your elderly parents. Yes. And he agreed, he, he also had experience dealing with dementia, you know, his parents with dementia and stuff, and we started digging in and we saw the schemes that elderly are that fall victim to. Um, they’re in a unique victim category in many ways, and we said we, we’re doing a whole chapter just on vulnerable adults, and that’s what we did. How do you, and we’re going to link to the book art so that people can take advantage and get that, and how do you, how do you stay abreast of all the different schemes that are going on?

Well, we keep track of like the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI has warnings, and then there’s a couple of websites that we talk about in our book that That, you know, keep up with the trends. One of the big things that uh is being talked about is pig butchering schemes. Pig butchering. OK. I’m imagining we don’t get any pork out of this, a freezer full of pork. And basically what it is. is they connect up with vulnerable individuals, you know, um maybe a um a widower or uh you know, somebody that’s divorced and it may be through a text message, could be an email, a friend request.

And they start off and develop this relationship. The pig butchering comes in as what they’re doing is they’re fattening the person up with love, care, understanding, and then when they’re at to a certain point, they Convince them to invest in schemes, basically old Ponzi schemes, you know, like you’ll get this humongous return and you and I will be able to be together in a lifestyle, and then that’s the butchering part, fatten them up with love and they’re gone, yeah, yeah, and The insidious thing is you’re thinking this is, I mean, it’s bad, but it gets even worse because these schemes are being run on an industrial level by criminal organizations in other countries, like in Cambodia, um, in that area, and they are actually setting up compounds with call centers.

That hand over the different functions, you know, like somebody starts off with the love, and then somebody is brought in to work on the the scheme to to produce the false business statements and stuff, and they just, they liquidate the person’s assets, and by the time they find out they’re, it’s gone, the money’s gone, you know, that’s, that’s the thing that’s heartbreaking. Yeah, and it, to think of that kind of evil, that industrial level evil was going on where they’re uh countries are letting these groups create these basically criminal organizations with buildings and infrastructure and all businesses with like what if they did good.

Why are they gonna come after, I mean, you know, on my, I’ve heard lots of stories in my role with, with people who have been scammed, sadly, and I’ve known people personally, you know, my uncle was basically like a genius, and you know, if, if you would have told me he would have gotten scammed, I would have never believed it. But the IRS gift card scam for my uncle, my brother lives with an intellectual disability and is on the autism spectrum, and we have to constantly monitor him.

His Facebook messages because he’s been, you know, he’s a lonely guy, he’s, you know, these women look beautiful, these women look beautiful that are are um inviting him. Now he, we have prevented kind of, he doesn’t have access to the things that could get him in a lot of trouble, you know, he gets a cash allowance and, you know, he’s been instructed not to give his personal information, but we have to still kind of monitor that. Is there Anything by the way that we can do besides monitoring his Facebook messages to better safeguard him?

Well, that you could install monitoring software to make sure he doesn’t set up other accounts. There is computer monitoring that we talk about the advantages of doing that, and then there’s also some legal concerns about whether you can do that under certain circumstances. Some of the names of the software. The one that I used to use was when I I know this because I used to supervise cyber offenders, and we would install software on theirs. The one that I used to use was SpectorSoft, but I don’t believe they’re using, I don’t believe they’re in the market, they’re doing like employer type things. Yeah.

Just a, what I would recommend is, because there’s monitoring software that’s specific to computers and then there’s monitoring software that can be used on cell phones. So that’s, that’s one way. One of the things that we Stresses is just open communication back and forth with the person, you know, who you’re talking to, you know, engage them, keep in contact, what’s, what’s going on with your life, you know, and if they start saying things like, you know, I think I’d like to travel overseas. Well, why would you like to travel overseas all of a sudden?

What’s that about? Well, I met this woman and she said we could be together, and then that raises the red flags. Yes. You know, the, the technology allows you to do, you know, the monitoring, but that’s, you know, you gotta check it all the time, where the actual engaging and finding out, getting involved in their life, they may start saying, you know, I’d like to, I, I wanna invest in Bitcoin currency, you know. A 7580 year old person, why the heck somebody my age in their 60s. Why do you want all of a sudden invest in that risky venture and who’s got you thinking about that?

So the communication is key, keeping knowing what’s going on, what they’re checking their bank accounts. Does this You know, it comes to a point like with my parents, where you got to step in and just take it over. Yeah. You can’t just let them continue because they’ll, they’ll circumvent it. One of the things that I’ve done is I’ve gone out and spoke publicly about my book, and I’m amazed at the number of people that come up and say, Yeah, I was victimized. I, you know, somebody told me my computer was infected and I paid to get it uninfected and I ended up getting ripped off or, you know, my friend had a girlfriend online and he invested and I was just amazed at the number of people, you know, they.

Yeah, I mean there’s the scam, right, where they they send you a text, but it could even be like I have a. site, I get, hey, you, you’ve got malware on your website, all the, you know, all the time. It’s just the lengths that they’ll go to with the phone calls and the texts and everything. It’s like you really, you know, then I, you know, I log into my WordPress and I just kind of check things out myself without clicking on links and stuff, but it’s, it’s sick.

It’s really sick. And then I think there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot of underreporting in this, right? Because people are embarrassed about it. Definitely, definitely. But my dad, he was getting emails from the FBI that there was a warrant out for him, and I go, he should know better, but I would say, Dad, the FBI doesn’t send you an email or a text. They don’t call, they just come get you. Yeah. And he would get your computers infected and because I had computer expertise, he’d farm them over to me and I’m like, Dad, this is a scam.

And one of the things I had to caution my dad with. He constantly would go into the spam folder and look at those and go, why is the FBI? I’m like, Dad, there’s a reason it’s been marked sca uh spam. It’s, it’s not good. And he couldn’t understand why the FBI would allow anybody to impersonate him and, um, uh, just, and, uh, if my dad had fallen to one of those schemes, he would have been devastated if he would, he would have, there’s an. Embarrassment. It’s a sign like, how could I be so foolish?

Now they’re gonna, you know, my kids or loved ones are gonna take away my freedom. I’m so stupid, those kinds of things. These schemes are very sophisticated, very smart people are falling victim to them. So I think we need to get away from the victims shaming that, you know, there are schemes out there now that are using artificial intelligence. Our voices, right? A few months ago there was an article in South America where the grandparents scheme, they were getting voices off of social media of family members’ kids, and they were using AI to imitate those voices and call up and say, I’ve been in a car accident and you send me money.

So the use of artificial intelligence, um, and these people know all the All the tricks to psychologically trick somebody. You need to act right away. That’s a sales technique. That’s a psychological. You need to act right away or bad things are gonna happen or you’re gonna miss out on this opportunity and that time thing, they weave that into this. You need to hit now or you’re gonna lose money, you know, and that gets people motivated and they end up throwing caution. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I’m thinking like the do not call list like that.

It might be something that we can do to kind of protect our, our loved ones, but I can’t tell you like I, how many texts I get even, there’s not a do not text list, is there? Can I get on that? Basically, what they’re, they’re doing is they’re, they’re purchasing these lists, and they, if they’re gonna run a scam, they don’t care about a do not call list. I mean, that’s, that’s if they, they can track it back. They use computers to make random calls to all these numbers and hoping they pick somebody when we.

the best thing to do is just ignore them, don’t, you know, don’t respond. I get them on my cell phone all the time. Hi, and I’m like, OK. Yes. And sometimes if I’m bored, I play along like, OK, what do you, what do you want? You know, and then they, and they’re like you’re you’re in the field of doing that, which makes sense to see how far they’ll go, what they’ll say, you’re educating yourselves. Is it best to block them or just to delete them? I would block them and delete them.

You don’t want to respond back because that tells them it’s a real number. But I don’t think, I don’t think they care. It doesn’t cost anything to just keep calling random numbers. Yeah, and it’s like you said, it’s programmed. It’s not, it’s, well, I love your tip about the communication. I think that that’s something. I learned things through my brother just by talking to him, and sometimes we can, can prevent these things. But sometimes too, he thinks that we’re just like, I don’t know if he thinks we’re trying to prevent him from having love and relationships.

He’s like, no, this is a person, like this is what she looks like. I’m like that is, you know, she does not, that is not a real person. With someone who neurodivergent or have a cognitive thing to explain that. They just, it’s unbelievable. Well, on that same token, I, I think it’s important also to tell them about real life examples of other people getting falling schemes. And we include some of those examples, like, hey, this happened to this person, you’re not You’re not alone, tells them, you know, other people fall into this and it shows that these people will lie and manipulate to steal.

It’s, you know, you’re not making it up. Yeah, it’s sick, it’s sick. And I’m gonna put the, you know, if you fall victim to a scam reporting it immediately, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center IC3 will link to that in the um Uh, show notes. Anything else, I mean, with your book, obviously we’re going to link to that. Anything else that we can do to, you know, I don’t want to overwhelm the caregivers, but I want us to be smart. Well, prevention is the best, the best key, but we talk also about, and that’s part of our book is surviving.

OK, so you’ve been attacked. What do you do to overcome that? And we talk about reporting it, and then the process of how you, you know, collect as much information to give to law enforcement. Um, you know, they may not be able to catch the person right away, but the Internet Crime Center will take those reports and it will generate, you know, like, oh, this is part of an organization, this is similar to this person in this area, and they may be able to eventually recover the losses, but the, you know, the thing is, you know, prevention obviously, and then You know, reporting it and recovering afterwards and taking steps to make sure whatever happened before doesn’t happen again.

And then tell other people, like, hey, this is a scheme that’s going on, you know. Don’t be ashamed of it, but help educate, learn from it, help other people. What are, what are your opinions on like identity theft insurance? Is that, is that how? We talk about insurance, having insurance, particularly like if you’re running a business, a loss of data that could subject you to your customers coming after you for breaching data. I think insurances can be a good way. We talk also about how to get a credit freeze, freezing your credit, how to unfreeze it, you know, those are alternatives too, so that um we did that with my parents, we froze their credit so that we didn’t have to worry about somebody.

Opening up lines of credit in their name. Is that like a website you can go to to do that? Yeah, in the book, and we talk about the differences between a credit freeze and um. Uh, you know, complete block. We talk about, um, you could put an alert on your account, and that stuff’s free. That doesn’t cost you anything. Ironic, we have credit freezes and I’ve gotten notices that my parents’ IDs have come up in a breach somewhere. Um, I think AT&T was one of I, well, I got one from AT&T.

So it’s, it’s a way to stop anybody from opening up lines of credit. Yeah, good, good preventative stuff. There and good things that that we can learn. Again, I’ll I’ll link to the book, but it’s called Surviving a Cyberattack, Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home Network, and it’s co-authored with Todd Shipley, so we’ll, we’ll link to that. Let’s, let’s switch gears, art, and talk about your self-care. You, I imagine you were working while caring for your folks and arranging all this and being their financial caregiver.

What did that look like for you? Like how, how were you able to not You know, completely go through burnout and and be an unhappy, unhealthy caregiver. Well, I kind of took it in stride, kind of like humor. I remember one distinct occasion where at this time, my mom was in the nursing home, and my dad was by himself in the assisted living, and he was, he was like 85 and uh we’re talking, well, you’re, you’re from Pennsylvania, Ohio in the winter time in February. OK. Not my favorite time.

Yeah, cold, and he had actually, he, he had bruised ribs from a fall. He’d come back and he was in the assisted living, and I get a call from the assisted living at say 1:30 in the morning, and they go, your dad wants to talk to you, we want to talk to you afterwards. And I’m like, OK. And my dad proceeds to say that he had been kidnapped and had been kidnapped. and I, I’m like, OK, Dad, well, you’re OK now, you’re back at the assisted living. Well, then I talked to the caregiver and I go, what is he talking about?

Apparently, my dad had climbed out one of their crank out windows, and climbed out of the crank out window and it escaped to downtown, and they did not know, they had alarms on all the doors. I don’t know how he climbed out of crank out. Window. I couldn’t climb out a crank out window. He managed to do that, and they got a call from the police, Hey, are you missing one of your residents? And they go, No, they’re all here, the doors. They went back and checked.

He had pushed the bed up against the door and they climbed out and was trying to flag down cars at 1:30, and I’m kind of like, well, that’s a lot of gusto at that age. Yeah, he was committed committed to. To, to get out of there and I kind of like chuckled and I’m like, I was the kid that I didn’t escape from my house as a teenager and all that stuff, and here I am going through with my father escaping and doing stuff that was kind of like, I’m living his teenage years.

So I saw the humor of it, and I’m like, well, I hope when I get to that age, I am rambunctious enough to, you know, push against the odds and escape and Yeah. But I, I tried to see the humor, I mean, they would, uh, They would give him near beer, not non-alcoholic beer. He thought it was the grace. He, you know, was sitting out on the patio drinking a beer, and I’m like, he was having a good time. He was a rebel. So he ended up, your dad, your mom had Alzheimer’s, but did your, your dad had cognitive decline or at least some adventures.

His, his was more like short term memory loss. Like if you tell him something, you, you can carry on a conversation with him and then he would forget what you talked about. Mom was, she was reverting back to when she was a child, and she, she’s non-communicative. She doesn’t talk now. Um, where he never was like that. He would, he’d be able to carry on a conversation. Now, the next week, if you try to bring out, hey, we talked about this, he might not remember it. And then the experience of, I didn’t realize that urinary tract infections cause significant, I don’t want to say, Yeah, hallucinations, dementias, yes, and I was able, you know, they would call me up and say, you know, your dad’s talking about flying the plane.

I go, my dad never flew a plane. You need to check him for a UTI. Yeah, and sometimes it’s like, it’s, it’s not painful for them to go to the bathroom. There’s no other signs. My mom definitely, she accused my dad of cheating on her during a UTI and hor like, yeah, saying horrible things that Yeah, so that’s always a good, a good advice for caregivers to, is to look at, look at that and, and check into that. Well, what does self-care look like for you now?

Do you have hobbies and interests? Well, I am still working, working on this book, trying to, you know, educate people about that. I also do work part-time for the, uh, Guardians, former Cleveland Indians, right, and we’re teeing off for the summer season, so I’ll be for that. I also do you do for the Guardians. I work in security in their employee lot, which means I get to sit outside in the sun and enjoy the sun, the hot weather, which is great. And people watching, a lot of people watching.

Yeah, um, I’ve done that for, uh, this is gonna be my 8th year of doing that. You get to see any of the game? Where I’m at now, I don’t, but they give us like bobbleheads or whatever. the giveaways are, we get those. I do it on the weekend. It’s not hard, and uh I have a fondness for smoking cigars, and I can sit out in the parking lot and smoke cigars and, and work, and it’s great. I enjoy it. Nice. I’m also a member of the Elks and uh I’m down there regularly, um, enjoy the communication, the social events.

With them and I also have uh 7 grandchildren who keep me occupied all to my to my daughter, so 177 grandkids. What are your, what do your grandkids call you? Big Big G. Big granddaddy, I’m the largest grandfather of all of them. Because they, because they, some of them knew my grandfather, so that was their great grandfather, you know, my son-in-law’s father, so I said just call me Big G, and they usually just call me G. Nice. I think I saw on your Instagram to you bourbon lover. Yes, I do.

What’s your what’s your favorite bourbon? My, my husband works in the beverage industry. Um, I have a fondness for Long Branch, Long Branch, right? I’m also a Woodford Reserve. Um, yeah, I know that one. the nice thing is my where my uh. My grandkids live is in Kentucky, which is right near Bourbon Trail, so I go down there and uh The yolks, we have uh bourbon tastings. We have. So I get to enjoy a bourbon, uh, every once in a while down there, but maybe once a week or so.

Well, it sounds like you’re very plugged into your community. You’ve got a lot of social outlets, you know, fun family outings and things like that, which is important to not feel isolated as a family caregiver, and we’ll we’ll link to your, to your Instagram profile. It’s computer PO like is it like Um, this was the PO stand for. When I was a probation officer, I, I was in charge of cyber offender, so computer probation officer. I also have one, that’s connected strictly with the book that, uh, it’s not as active, um.

Uh, cyber safety, yeah, we’ll link to that one as well. So very cool, very cool. And of course we’ll link to other spots. I also share the stories of my sister. My sister having the support of a sibling when you’re dealing with parents that are having trouble is, is great, and just being able to talk, and I’ve learned that I think the social isolation, isolating yourself from others as you get older is not the way to go. Mm. From what I’ve read, you know, keeping active, keeping involved.

Having structure, I mean, we all kind of crave that too. We’re in this process of, for my brother, like one of the ways of keeping him out of trouble online is to keep him pretty busy and so we’re looking at, you know, we’ve got him in some workday programs now where he’s finding purpose and socializing with other people and helping other people, which is, which is amazing. So it’s, it’s been interesting to see him thrive because he’s been isolated from other people living with disabilities, much, much of Yeah, we’re just kind of in a test and learn stage and trying different things.

Well, any kind of any other parting words for family caregivers, something you wish we talked about that we didn’t, or, and then what is the best way that you would recommend people get in touch with you? They can get in touch with me through my email accounts or on the cybersafety guy. blog. OK, as long as they don’t send any spam. Yeah, no spam, although my spam filter, it’ll it’ll take care of that. It just Get active in your, in your, your vulnerable adult’s life, do it sooner than later.

I think that was one of the regrets, my sister and I, we didn’t realize how far it had gone. It’s a lot more difficult having to clean out a hoarder’s house than nipping it in the bud early on, but get, stay involved, open lines of communication, understand that they may say things or do things that seem like they don’t care or they’re angry, and it’s the illness. It’s the It’s one of the symptoms. And just, you have to understand that and take that into account. Yes, well, thank you so much, Art, for sharing your experiences, for sharing your wealth of knowledge in the cyber safety space.

Well, hopefully we’re going to get people kind of plugged in and connected through your book and, and talking to their, to their loved ones so that we can get in front of it and hopefully prevent some of these Catastrophes from happening. It’s just a really scary world out there, unfortunately, and people are coming after our vulnerable adults and people living with disabilities and it’s, it’s, it’s horrible. It’s horrible. So thank you so much for what you do in this space and thank you for for coming on today to share.

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about this topic. You’re welcome. Hello podcast listener. If you’re caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia, you don’t want to miss All’s Authors podcast Untangling Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’m your host, Mary Anne Schuko, a registered nurse, author, and dementia daughter. In each episode, I interview one of our 300+ authors about their personal dementia story and why they chose to write about it, sharing intimate details and painfully obtained. Colledge to help you on your own journey.

We share a variety of stories across all diagnoses and from a range of caregiving experiences. You can find us on your favorite podcast platform in the whole Care Network. Remember, you are not alone. One can sing a lonely song, but we chose to form a choir and create harmony. Find us at alls authors.com. See you soon. Thanks for listening to the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast on the Whole Care Network. I hope this episode provided encouragement and practical tips to infuse into your life. You’ll find the show notes and all the resources mentioned at Hahealthy caregiver.com.

I also invite you to check out previous episodes of the podcast that you may have missed. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Ratings and reviews also help others discover the podcast, and sharing with a fellow caregiver is a great way to spread support. Stay connected with me between the episodes by following Happy Healthy caregiver on your favorite social media platforms and subscribe to the weekly newsletter, where every week I share something happy, healthy, and care related. Just visit happyhealthycaeggiver.com to join. Until our next episode, I’m Elizabeth Miller with a reminder to take care of you.

Are you still here? Well, it’s time for the disclaimer. I am not a medical, legal or financial professional and I am not providing medical, financial or legal advice. If you have questions related to these topics, please seek a qualified. Professional. I have taken care to spotlight family caregivers and experts, but their opinions are theirs alone. This podcast is copyrighted and no part can be reproduced without the written permission of Happy Healthy caregiver LLC. Thanks again for listening to the Happy Healthy caregiver podcast on the whole Care Network.