I don't think our government is telling us just how many new people are hitting the desparate-poverty level EVERY day now. I'm not sure that I want to know.
Any of us could be hit next for any number of reasons. Our new historically-shakey economic problems and what's happening in other parts of the world and the climate change... SCAREY!
I hope that you never regret what you did for this stranger. It's probable that she is on the up and up, but there are a lot of scam artists out there who have a line that's perfected from overuse. Anne and I picked up a woman walking on the street about a month ago. She spent the night at our house, bathing, sleeping, and eating. I was even going to drive her to Tennessee or pay for her flight to North Carolina. It became evident later that she was as I described earlier. She was living the way she wanted to live, and had just left a stable home in Minnesota (again). She was like Blanche DuBois'... "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." Okay, we knowingly let her trick us into buying her some things at Penny's (She got us there saying she needed to get her credit card situation straightened out.), and gave her some cash. We wouldn't let her talk us into giving her cash for the plane ticket, so she insisted on our dropping her off on a ramp leading to Highway 65. Finally, we gave her some cash and took her to the ramp, and she was off again to meet someone else to listen to her well-practiced lines. I'm not sorry that we helped her, but then, I'm also not sorry that she is living the carefree, vagabond, "homeless" life that she chooses to live.
