When the call ended, my parents were sitting around her phone and scrolling through unfamiliar payment apps. They finally got to work on changing their passwords. They switched to password packs, but neither she nor my dad could decrypt her notes. “This is stupid. I can’t believe I did this, so stupid,” she said over and over. When my father finally sat down to eat, he brought his fork to his mouth without tasting much. That night, they barely slept.
The next day, during his lunch break, my father did what many parents with technology problems do. He called one of his children – me. I’m on a business trip that keeps me insanely busy, and I just want to take a quick nap. Before I could close my eyes, the phone rang. “Hi!” he said, his voice strangely cold. “Hello,” I replied cautiously. “What’s going on?”
“I just need to talk this through and figure out how to deal with it,” my dad said. I kicked the blanket off and sat up straight. His voice drops to half an octave as he abandons his cheerful tone and gives me basic outlines. His lunch break was coming to an end, so we agreed to continue the conversation later. Feeling nauseous, I poured myself a glass of water and paced around my Airbnb, thinking. Then I sat down on my laptop and started typing.
“Some thoughts on privacy,” I wrote to my father. “Now they have all of your addresses. Make sure she knows not to open the door to anyone she doesn’t know.” I ticked other items: Contact Experian, the credit monitoring agency; close the account for the apps she installed; Contact the IRS in the event of identity theft.
That night, after work, my dad called back, and together we set up a fraud alert through Experian. My dad texted me the password to my mom’s PayPal account, and I turned it off. He got back in touch with the USAA, and that night – thankfully – he learned that he could collect close to $10,000.
Empty relief. We still feel exposed. I haven’t closed all accounts yet, and we’re not sure if the scammers will still be able to see everything my mom typed into her phone. She still spends her days at home alone. They can be easily called back. My father, completely exhausted, said he couldn’t do more that night. We hung up.
The next day, around noon, I finally called my mother to ask about her version of events. Her answer was simple, and the pain behind her words was clear. “I did a stupid thing,” she said. “I’m stupid.”
Her words echoed in my head. At that moment my mother needed a daughter, not a technical assistant. My mind jumped to the decision to skip the flight home to California, rent a car, and transfer to West Tennessee to reassure her directly. But I went back to work, and I went to the airport instead.
That day has become a clear boundary in time for me. Sure, we got most of the money back. But I no longer believe that my parents are still unharmed. Therefore, next year, I moved to the South to be closer to home.
