Recharger adores Christmas hypocrisy, especially the part where he gets presents and doesn’t give any. But something about this story made him pause mid-sip in his Jack Daniels.
Nancy has received money from the New York Time Neediest Cases Fund so she can pay off her Con Ed bill. In July 2004, Ms. Caballero, who lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn, traveled to Puerto Rico to be with her daughter, Rosa Corsino, who was hospitalized with a serious intestinal infection. While helping Corsino give birth to her sixth child, the doctor “mistakenly sliced part of her [Ms. Corsino’s] intestine, which became infected and abscessed.”
Caballero stayed in Puerto Rico, taking care of her daughter. But when she returned to her apartment on February 2006, she discovered that someone had used it, leaving her $1,900 in debt to Con Edison. Even though she hadn’t used the utilities, she still had to pay. She found a baby sitting job, but by November the bill was more than $1,700.
-- Wen Liu