Something Forgotten

 Part 1
When I first posted about the ordeal with Amanda, I left out something I'd forgotten until late the other night. It came to me as I was reflecting on what I had already posted about this journey with Amanda and I realized it was actually a very telling situation. Had it been in the forefront of my mind  as other things occurred that caused me to question Amanda's  trustworthiness, things might have turned out very differently.  I believe it is significant enough to backtrack and insert it into the story.

In the early stages of Amanda Wright's contact with me in winter 2012, one of the things she told me in reference to her intentions to begin a breeding operation was that she was going to be receiving a farm grant to fund her start up. According to her, this grant was a done deal although she was unclear on when the funds would be dispersed.

Considering she had  no means of support, no farm and no animals, I found it very interesting she had qualified for a government farm grant. With circumstances as they were here between my illness and Dave's job loss and the amount of money Amanda was talking about, the whole idea got me thinking so I began searching for farm grants for women. That had been as specific as Amanda had been in sharing information about this government funding she claimed was coming her way so it sounded like a good place to start.  Despite my search efforts, there were no grants available with qualifications that would fit me and none that fit Amanda either. ( There were grants for farmers in Africa though)

Unsure of what this could mean, I passed that information on to Amanda asking her questions, trying to determine how she might think she was getting funding that didn't exist. Had she been duped somehow? 

Amanda didn't  volunteer information but she did answer some of my questions albeit in a very limited fashion. Through this process I learned the grant writer was a lawyer from a firm retained by her mother many years ago. There was a credit on file that Amanda used for the grant writing she needed. Over time the story devolved to Amanda had discovered he didn't even work at that firm and now he was stalking her.  The police were involved but having no luck finding him despite the fact he was using a cell phone to call and text her. Amanda claimed it was limited resources of the county that allowed this guy to get away with stalking her but I must admit it always struck me like I was more concerned about this many and his behavior than Amanda appeared to be.


My life experience has been pretty varied so I have some interesting life skills. I have married 2 abusive men, been stalked by one of them and a very scary co-worker so I get those risks and behaviors. I  also have a decent understanding of grants, the law and how the police work so Amanda's explanations about this grant and its writer did not make sense to me. I was trying to help her resolve this problem but her details were sketchy at best. Taking her at her word,  I kept asking lots of questions trying to figure things out but I never got much more than what I've shared here.  Amanda did appear to lack specifics that I thought she should have known. I had serious concerns about this story but I hadn't gotten to the point of thinking that the problem was Amanda, instead I was buying her claims she had been duped and she was in jeopardy.

If I recall it was at about this time that Amanda's contact with me got pretty sparse although she managed to maintain the front she was interested in helping me. We seemed to rarely talk on the phone, when we did it was brief. She didn't catch me on FB chat which she'd had an uncanny instinct for in the past. What little contact we had was brief text messages and she would stop communicating mid stream. She told me this was because she was stressed and it had nothing to do with me. In hindsight, I must wonder if it was an avoidance tactic so she didn't have to deal with my questions on the status of this situation with the grant writer and the law, hoping I would forget and it would all go away......which seems to be  what happened.

I finally forgot about tracking the progress of the police with the stalker since Amanda wasn't returning my phone calls. When she did call me there was a new crisis to keep my attention and play on my need to help those less fortunate.

Knowing what I do now, I wonder what was real and what wasn't with Amanda. I don't know that there is any way to tell for sure but this whole story about this grant is now certainly suspect to me.  I can poke all kinds of holes in that story.

I did a lot of research on that supposed grant and there was no such funding by the government that year or any of the 2 years before or after.   When there was no grant, her explanation, that a corrupt attorney turned stalker enabled by poor police work was at the bottom of it,  seems like a pretty big stretch.

I believe had I not forgotten this whole story about this grant, the pieces would have fallen into place much sooner for me about Amanda's game and saved us all a lot of grief. Unfortunately, I didn't get it soon enough and we were caught in the crossfire that is Amanda Wright's life.

To be continued........

An Acquisition Followed by an Invitation........