Extreme Help Needed: SAVE THIS HOUSE!

The economic horror story of 2008 involves home foreclosures, ballooning health care costs, the difficulties of getting credit, and the deeply troubled Detroit auto industry. The Vardon family in Oak Park, Michigan is the poster child for all four of these calamities.

            Four years ago, it was a different story. The Detroit Pistons had won the Basketball Championship, the “Big 3” was profitable, and home ownership was on the rise. And when, in the fall of 2004, 20 million television viewers watched the Vardon family step out of a limousine, many of us wept with joy and relief. Like the Vardons, we were stunned how “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” renovated their small Oak Park home to help these struggling deaf parents care for their blind, autistic son. Like so many other “Extreme Makeover” episodes, we were left with a feel-good Cinderella ending.

            Four and a half years later, no one feels good. The Vardon house is extremely close to foreclosure and help is desperately needed. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my house now,” Judy Vardon signed through an interpreter. (“Oak Park family who received ‘Extreme Makeover’ faces foreclosure,” Michael P. McConnell, Journal Register News Service, Dec. 8, 2008,) “This house really belongs to Lance; this is his environment. He can’t speak out for himself and I hope we can save this house.”

            Three years ago, in the height of the adjustable mortgage craze, the Vardons refinanced with an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM). This wasn’t to get a better deal but to allow them to pay for Lance’s escalating medical bills. Judy said, “We didn’t have bad spending habits. My husband got laid off for a time (at the Chrysler Stamping Plant) and insurance wouldn’t cover Lance’s autism therapy and some other things like his vision and special dental work.” The debt for Lance’s therapy alone was $20,000 then.

            In four years, the mortgage was sold three times and the interest rate went up each time and now is 11.9%. In four years, the house payments have gone from $1200 to $1600 to $2300 per month. Their property taxes went from $1874 to $2852 per year. Their medical insurance doesn’t cover treatment for autism. And the Vardons are terrified that Larry will lose his job as a metal finisher for Chrysler.

            When the Vardons tried to refinance for a fixed loan, they didn’t qualify because of their credit scores. So this house, made just for the Vardons, which includes a computer that reads Braille, security strobe lights and cameras for Lance’s safety, a textured piano and toys, is close to being closed for good, or at least until someone else pays a ridiculously low price from the bank to take it over.

            The irony is brutally painful. But Judy is realistic as she signs, “Millions of others are experiencing the same thing.” She is right. Just this year, 390 homes in the small town of Oak Park are in foreclosure. In Michigan’s wealthiest county, Oakland County, foreclosures have ballooned from 2117 in 2004 to 9400 in 2008, a 440% increase. And this is before the latest rounds of layoffs and firings from the Detroit automakers, banks, and so many other companies in Michigan and around the country.

            The signs of trouble in this holiday season are everywhere but there is no reason to give up. The Vardons are a symbol of hope amidst the desperation. “We’re a close family who loves each other,” Judy said. “I feel that I was given this life to show others that you can face these challenges.”

            The Detroit area community has rallied to help the Vardons in the face of its worst economic winter since the Great Depression. WKQI-FM (99.5) raised $5000 and Seth Cohen of Mortgage Access Centers LLC in Birmingham is working on getting the Vardons a lower fixed-rate. He confidently said, “They’re not going to go into foreclosure.” (“Extreme Supporters,” Ben Schmitt, Detroit Free Press, Dec. 11, 2008)

Donations to keep the Vardons in their home and to help with some of their medical costs have started to arrive from all over the Detroit community, following the WKQI story and the articles in the Free Press and the Oakland Press.

            Judy Vardon put her hands out in sign language to say that, “Foreclosure could happen to anyone at anytime.” Yes it can, but I want to tell her: not this time and not her house. Not if we all pitch in to help in this time of Christmas, Hanukkah, and the New Year. Instead of saying to her and her family, “Move This Bus!” we can speak to her without words. We can donate to the Friends of the Vardon Family Fund at P.O. Box 721084, Berkley, MI 48071-0084.

            We can tell her loud and clear with our checks and our hearts that we are here to “SAVE THIS HOUSE!”

           

The Lost Treasure

The blanket draped around Cindy’s casket reads: “When someone you love becomes a Memory, the Memory becomes a Treasure.”

            The lost treasure of the life of Cindy Zarcycki can finally be laid into the ground. After 22 years of mystery and mourning, Cindy’s parents and siblings can finally place their daughter and sister to rest.

            It was only in the last few months that the mystery of Cindy was solved and that mourning could finally begin. “This whole summer was surreal,” childhood friend, Cindy Dombrowski, now 36, said at Schultz Funeral Home in Eastpointe, Michigan. “I woke up this morning and thought, ‘God, Cindy, it’s a Friday. This is supposed to be your bachelorette party or a night out together, not your funeral.” (“Now, family can say good-bye,” Amber Hunt, Detroit Free Press, November 29, 2008)

            It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Cindy’s childhood pictures were posted around the funeral home: Cindy taking pictures with her siblings, her eating messily as a baby, and with her father, jumping in the waves at the beach.

            This was what the rest of her life could have been: photos with her high school friends, her high school graduation, eating her wedding cake and a photo with her first child. But all of this was speculative imagination, just pure hope. All hopes for a young girl’s growth to adulthood ended when the father of her 13-year-old boy friend deceived Cindy and picked her up at the 9 Mile Dairy Queen, inviting her to his son’s made-up “surprise birthday party.”

            The evidence is now conclusive that Arthur Ream, the father of her friend, raped Cindy, killed her, and buried her along with her cassette tape and purse in a shallow riverside grave on a small plot of Macomb Township land that friends of Ream used to own.

            For 22 years, Cindy’s family and friends wondered where Cindy had gone. Was she alive somewhere, a refugee from the family? Was she kidnapped and held and kept away from everyone she loved? Or was she dead and buried somewhere unknown? The loss and the fears of the unknown were unbearable.

            Cindy’s sister and best friend wear tattoos now as a way to say that they will never forget her. Her sister, Constance, has these words marked on her calf: “Allways Remembered.” She says, “That’s how Cindy always spelled it.” Her best friend, Cindy Dombrowski, also has a tattoo spelled on her arm. It reads, “Never Forgotten.”

No one can forget the shock of finding Cindy a few months ago, led by a convicted pedophile who claimed he wasn’t responsible but admitted the murder to a fellow inmate last year. For the past 6 ½ years, Eastpointe detectives had searched for clues, never giving up the belief that Cindy’s killer was nearby. Now, with strong circumstantial evidence, they were finally able to find the killer. They were able to convict Ream in July of first-degree murder and eventually, they were able to get him to lead them to the place that he buried her 22 years ago. When the remains were tested, the DNA confirmed that what was left in the ground was 13-year-old Cindy.   

            Cindy’s parents and siblings are sad but grateful on this Thanksgiving weekend for the persistence and dedication of deputies and detectives who never gave up the search for Cindy’s abductor. They are thankful that they can finally give their little girl a proper burial next to her grandmother.

            Death seems so empty and pointless but maybe the family and friends can at least feel some closure and a little retribution. After years of freedom, Cindy’s killer is finally locked up for the rest of his life.

All of this can’t stop me from wondering why Arthur Ream’s son, the boy who Cindy wanted as her boyfriend, was killed in a car accident eight years after Cindy, on Independence Day, 1994.  I can only hope the grief that Arthur Ream felt then and through the years was as devastating as the grief felt by Cindy’s family.

            The mysteries of murder and unspeakable grief still linger today. The memories of Cindy seem so far away now but the sadness will never disappear. Yet, on this Thanksgiving weekend at the start of the 2008 Christmas season, Cindy is not in an unknown, imaginary place. Cindy’s friend, Cindy, said, “This is the first time she’s been home for the holidays. She’s actually home.”

            There’s nothing warm and wonderful in this holiday season for the Zarzyckis. The ending is a little less tormenting but there’s a little solace that finally there is a burial ground, a sacred place to search for Cindy’s soul.

            A 13-year-old girl will never grow up. Her memory is locked into the hearts of the few who remember her.

            That is all that is left, the memories…allways memories of a treasured life that is gone but never forgotten.