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Unit opens doors for senior citizens when they’ve hit a big, brick wall
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
Frank Vollhardt says senior citizens advocate Nicole Agani saved his life a year ago by demanding that doctors run a CAT scan that revealed an abscess in his abdomen.
“She seriously saved my life,” Vollhardt, 74, said of Agani, hired by Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere in March 2009 as one of two employees of the Trumbull County Senior Service Unit. Money from the countywide senior citizens levy pays for the unit’s operations.
Vollhardt had been sent to a Warren nursing home after his June 2009 colon- cancer surgery but didn’t feel well enough to get out of bed, had trouble breathing, had to be hospitalized for the “shakes” and lost 41 pounds, he said.
By September 2009, Vollhardt, who has no family in the area, felt like he was dying.
“I said if I could get a gun, it’s over. It was that bad,” Vollhardt said last week from his Warren home.
A friend contacted Agani, a medical researcher from 2002 to 2007, to ask her to see if she could get Vollhardt some help.
At a Warren hospital, she asked a doctor to give Vollhardt a CAT scan.
“I said, ‘I want to have a body scan,’” Agani said of a test that costs around $11,000.
“The doctor said, ‘He doesn’t need that.’ Then he asked ‘Why do you want to have that?’” Agani said.
“I said, ‘Because he matters.’”
The scan revealed a large abscess (a collection of pus surrounded by inflammation). Vollhardt said a tube was placed in his abdomen, and it drained off lots of black liquid.
“The day after, I felt fine,” Vollhardt said.
He recovered for several weeks in a nursing home, then returned to his house, where he is again able to climb steps and do yard work. He regained most of his pre-surgery weight.
Agani says Vollhardt is probably her best success story since she and former Girard Mayor Vincent Schuyler started the senior- service unit, but the two have also helped scores of senior citizens who have fallen victim to fraud.
“We really try to advocate for our senior citizens when they have nowhere else to turn,” Agani said.
Harriett Porreca, 77, was living in Cortland last year when a young male relative used personal information to open accounts under Porreca’s name and purchase services.
She discovered that she had a large number of unauthorized charges in her name and poor credit when she tried to rent an apartment, Agani said.
“These weren’t my bills. They just kept saying ‘They’re in your name. You have to pay them,’” Porreca said by telephone recently.
She tried for many months to get the bills erased on her own without success. And the effort was taking a toll.
“You have no idea the nights and afternoons I would just cry because I didn’t know what to do,” Porreca said.
She was referred to Agani by an employee at the Cortland Senior Center.
“Within six to eight weeks, we had them settled,” Porreca said. “Nicole walked me through it.”
Schuyler, a former police officer, said he and Agani have the information to “open doors” for senior citizens who have “hit a stone wall.”
Agani said one key is that she and Schuyler have access to police records that enable them to identify scammers and persuade companies to rescind fraudulent charges on credit cards.
Schuyler said he and Agani have also helped a lot of seniors when they have trouble with their medications or need help getting into a nursing home.
Helping seniors who have been victimized by scam artists is one of the most important tasks of their unit because identity theft is the fastest-growing crime in America, with senior citizens being among the chief targets, Agani said.
One Warren woman in her 70s sent more than $20,000 to people who called her on the telephone saying she had won $4 million and a BMW automobile in a lottery.
The woman’s financial adviser called Agani to see if she could find out why the woman was withdrawing large amounts of money from her investments.
The woman was embarrassed to admit to Agani at first why she was sending the money, but eventually Agani helped her understand what was happening.
There was no way to recover the lost money, Agani said, because the phone calls had come from Jamaica.
The woman was an example of someone who got on a “suckers list,” Agani said.
“Once you’re on a suckers list, you get inundated with phone calls,” Agani said.
The phone number at the senior service unit is 330-675-7096.