TL;DR: My Mom was swindled out of $7812 and my family needs some of the support we've given returned to us.

Full Story: My name is Colin Kovarik. If you know me, chances are good you know my parents. They are deeply kind people who like to know my friends. If you know us you may also know something about our history over the last 12 or so years.  My parents are very generous people who tend to give until it hurts. To name a few examples (with names withheld for privacy), they:

-Helped one friend get out of a soon-to-be condemned apartment and into rehab when he was on the edge of death.

-Hosted a family of three in our home for more than a year and supported them when they had nowhere to turn.

-Organized a team to help clear out and repair the home of a church acquaintance who had lost the ability to keep up their home and who was having their health impacted by poor sanitation.

-For the last 5 years, hosted and supported a young woman fleeing family violence when she also had nowhere to go.

-Covered *many* emergency bills for friends in financial struggles despite our own financial precarity after years of chronic unemployment/underemployment.

Now my parents need to ask for some of that generosity back. Over the last several weeks, my Mom was swindled out of approx. $7812 (that's the closest we can tabulate it) by someone who took advantage of her trust while repeatedly promising to pay it back. After considering what (little) we know about the situation of this person, we have concluded there is almost zero chance these funds will be returned.

My parents have almost no savings left to fall back on, having depleted their retirement to keep above water during those stretches of unemployment -- and that's pre-pandemic. This latest blow paired with additional lost income from COVID has put us in the most frightening financial position of our lives. For example, while my father continues working a low wage job at a a warehouse, the pandemic has cost my mom 2 of her 3 church jobs and she is going to sell one of her life insurance policies to try and keep us afloat. (Not to mention my own theatre career being completely stalled indefinitely. There's very little I can do to help).

I know that this could seem in poor taste given the national circumstance but I also know that we are loved by a lot of people who might want to help if we would just ask. This $7812 figure is purely to recoup the amount stolen which will then go to cover mortgage payments and other bills.  Any amount helps. We were able to get a 3-month delay on the mortgage but it will come due soon enough.

Thanks for your time.

- Colin