As cynical as I’ve become with parking lot scams, I hope I never actually need to ask a stranger for $20 for Pop-a-Lock or a new car battery.
In Baltimore, naturally, I get panhandled a lot.
One of the common ones is that when you’re approaching your car, a
person will say, “can you give me a ride to such and such?” knowing full well you’ll say no. Usually “such and such” is one of the shelters.
When you decline, the line is, “well, then can you give me a couple dollars for bus fare?”
I’ve never actually said, “sure, hop in.” I always assumed that if I did, they would not get in. Your lady may have been playing along, hoping for more trust building before hitting you up. I wouldn’t have let her get in.
Also, the presence of a small child with the person is not unheard of. It might make you feel extra guilty but there’s no way that $2 is going into that kid’s belly. There are services for that kind of thing in the city and people who are really looking out for their kid aren’t bumming $2 off strangers.
Another old scheme is, “I was out with my friends from <other town> and I can’t find them, and they have the car. Can you give me $15 for the cab.”
I think you were being played.
A couple of months ago, I was at a gas station filling up the Spitfire when a 20ish guy asked me if I’m taking the Canyon Road and if so, could give him a ride a couple of miles down the road. His incredibly ugly early 70s Mustang had quite obviously broke down and he said he needed a ride out to his mom to fill her vehicle with gas.
I’m a woman, alone, driving a convertible and this guy is asking me to drive him down a road into basically nowhere…so naturally I agreed to give him a ride. As we drive along, he tells me his whole story and it sucks–it’s 98 degrees out, his mom’s truck ran out of gas 10 miles outside of town, he walked into town to borrow his cousin’s car which overheated while he was filling the gas can for his mom. We get to the truck and his mom is standing on the side of the road all sweaty and miserable, telling these guys that her kid is coming with gas someday and she’ll be fine so they can leave her alone.
I almost refused to give this guy any help for a number of reasons. It is completely against my nature to put myself at this kind of risk. I even told the guy that if he was thinking about killing me and stealing my car, I would be really pissed and that people knew where I was going, and that people at the gas station had seen us talking. Still I helped him because of the circumstances–if his mom had a cell phone she wouldn’t have necessarily been able to get a signal where she was so I believed him when he said she had no idea where he was and was depending on him, I could see his broken-down car, people had seen us talking and would definitely remember the redhead with the cool car, etc.
In your case, she wasn’t gaining anything by leaving a shopping area where there phones to call friends for help to moving a few miles down the road to a hospital. If she was that desparate to get somewhere she would have started walking. She was probably hoping that once she got in your car she would be able to scam you into more–a ride to Pittsville to drop her off at her house where some bad thing was waiting? More money? Who knows.
Did you check your car for contraband? I did after I picked up my person in need and didn’t find anything.
Also, I have a bone to pick with Earl* and Ryan Seacrest. According to Earl and Ryan, after I did this guy a favor I should have got some good karma and something good should have happened to me. Instead, I picked up his crappy car karma–the alternator went out on the Spitfire less than an hour after I dropped him off and I had to limp her back home. I was robbed!!!
Did you get any good karma from your brief interaction?
*of My Name is Earl - NBC, Tuesdays 9 pm
Based on the information you gave, I can’t say for sure, but I do know this. There is a certain type of personality for which the first “yes” opens the door for a continuing set of requests. You give them the time, they ask for a cigaret, then for a ride, then money, etc.
These people honestly don’t understand that giving someone the correct time does not equal driving them to Pittsville and giving them the money to stay the night in a hotel. They are confused, hurt and even offended to learn otherwise.
It’s not just street people. It’s the party organizer who starts out asking you to bring some paper plates and leads up to you picking up the guest of honor at the airport 40 miles away. It’s the young man who believes a girl accepting a movie date is also agreeing to have sex later that evening, and so on, and so on.
I dunno, I guess I’m naive, but I don’t think I’m getting scammed when people come up and ask me for money, for any reason. I’m the kind of person who walks through my poorer neighborhood and gives out most of my change by the time I get home. I’ve given to people with sob stories as well as people who have just asked for it straight out. Are they scamming me if I know i’m being scammed? I guess I don’t feel like the morality of the issue is worth denying someone fifty cents on principle. Whatever they are using it for, they probably need it more than I need the cnady bar or soda I’d spend it on later.
As far as getting in the car, that’s always a little risky. In the long run, you shouldn’t be helping people out whether they need it or not if it’s going to make you feel unsafe or like a fool afterword.
Back in my college days, I was leaving work when I was approached by a man who wanted to know if I could give him a lift to a barbershop. As it turned out, my place of employment (Ross Dress for Less) had a hair salon in the back. I told him that, but he wanted to be taken somewhere else, where he had an appointment.
I told him it was out of my way, and left. Thinking back, I probably escaped being kidnapped and raped. The bad guys don’t necessarily wear signs. If they did, the good guys would see them and be able to protect themselves.
Most everyone has access to friends, debit cards, can walk to a bank, etc, that they don’t need to hit up strangers for help.
When I was a medical student I had just come out of the pizza place when a guy approached me with a slight limp. He said he had cut his foot on some glass and needed some money for some gauze and shit. Of course being so near to taking my Hippocratic Oath, I made him take off his shoe there in the parking lot to let me see how bad it was. I even offered to drive up to the nearby drug store to buy him some gauze and dress his wounds if he needed it. Well, when the shoe came off… he had some really nasty athlete’s foot, but no cuts or bleeding.
I then told him about the free-medical clinic about a mile up the road, but he declined to be seen.
Maybe I should have offered him some Lamisil.
I think you’re being scammed.
Like a lot of other people here, a similar thing happened to me and my husband in the supermarket shopping lot. A couple comes up to us, tells us they just finished shopping, but their van ran out of gas. The guy asks for money and a ride to the gas station which is less than a mile away. There’s an ATM in the supermarket and my husband points that out. The guy says both he and his wife forgot their credit cards and ATM cards. They pull out their wallets and show us. My husband is about to give them money and I tug on his sleeve and mutter, “Who leaves home with their wallet but no credit cards or ATM cards? Especially when they’re shopping and have just told us they bought stuff?” My husband tells them, “Sorry, we can’t help you,” and they both close in, trying to wheedle anything from us - just a little cash, maybe some change. If we have an ATM card, couldn’t we go in and get some cash for them? Uh, no, we can’t. So we get in our car quickly and drive away. In the rearview mirror, my husband sees them quickly approaching another person.
I’m always certain I’m being scammed when someone approaches me for money.
Minor nitpick: It’s Carson Daly from whom Earl learned the ways of karma. I’m not sure what Seacrestian philosophy would be, but it would probably involve hair gel.
not to continue the hijack, but not everyone affected by Katrina/Rita grew up in that area - My friend’s son (with a pronounced NY accent) went to college at Tulane, liked it so much, moved to that area. He was forced to move back home. Maybe she didn’t have a family home to return to
that was my thought, too. maybe i’ve watched too much L&O-SVU
Dammit, I thought I was messing up my worthless celebrities, but was too lazy to go look it up. Maybe that’s why karma hasn’t paid off yet…
This made me think of that children’s book: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…(he’s going to want a glass of milk)
Yeah, I agree with the general concensus; you were getting played. It’s a cynical world out there, isn’t it?
Being played. I’ve got many a story about these people at work. My real estate company deals with room rentals and will take people getting money from Social Service. Some of them expect us to pick them up (a very strict no-no–they have to come into the office first), take them to the room and back home, stopping at the grocery and the post ofice along the way, and maybe pick up a friend or two, and help them move, all because “I should get something for the money.” People have asked us for money for food and even if they can sleep in the office overnight!
I also think in your case yyou were being scammed.
But am I ever glad the couple who gave my SO and I a ride trusted us.
We were in Denver a few weeks ago, during the Great Exodus from Houston due to Hurricane Rita. The trip had already been planned (my hubbie won the trip from a company competition.) While we were there, my son called and asked for money, because he had evacuated without enough money. (There’s a thread on that somewhere.)
So, we go down to the hotel desk and ask the woman where would a Western Union be? She said that the Wal-Mart was a 10 minute walk down the road. (We didn’t have a rental car.) So we walk on down the winding downhill road, and after 15 minutes start to worry a little, but then figured we would call a cab to get us back, because we had to be ready to go to the company dinner at 5:00. It was 3:00 when we left. We finally got there about 3:30, took care of the Western Union thing, and by then it was 4:00. We called a cab, and by 4:20 it still wasn’t there.
Panic time! It took us 30 minutes to walk down hill! We couldn’t make it back to the hotel in time! The cab company said we were first priority and he was on his way, but we were out of time.
So I scope out a likely couple, and ask them if I gave them $10, would they give us a ride up the hill to La Quinta? We sort of explained the situation briefly, but I’m sure we were all rushed sounding, but they said yes! And didn’t want our $10.
They took us, and we gave them the $10 anyway (kind of threw it on their lap!)
About 5:30, when we were already at the restaurant, the cabby called and said he was at Wal-Mart and did we still need the cab? Unbelievable!
Well, that’s a bit different. You offered the couple up front cash to give you a lift. I don’t think scammers do that. They offer a tale of woe and play on your heartstrings, hoping to get something. You were going to pay and made that quite clear.
Chefguy may have been referring to the distinctive native accent of native Alaskans. It is quite obviously not southern, nor can it even remotely be mistaken for anything other than an Alaskan native accent.
Clench your teeth together, don’t open them at all, now talk way back in your throat, that’s a close approximation of one type of Alaskan native accent.
Other native accents are closer to the sing song Hawaiian type “pidgeon”, kind of pretty sounding, but again, NOT southern or anywhere near it.
Like everyone else here, I believe that this woman was a typical panhandler. If someone is really in trouble, it’s pretty obvious. Their car hood will be up and they’ll have jumper cables out. Or they’ll have the wire hanger already in action trying to get into their car, not asking for pop a lock money with no car in sight.
In my case, several years ago, my old caddy’s water pump croaked about 45 miles south of Anchorage on my way back in from the Kenai. It was pouring rain, and a nice couple in a van stopped and took me, my dog and all of my belongings, that were piled into the back seat of my caddy into town.
Likewise, if a person is obviously already struggling with having locked their keys in their car or something and it’s legitimate, most folks would be MUCH more likely to want to have help getting it open than to give 35 bucks to some locksmith company and they’ll ask for help on the door lock, not money.
(I know, because when I was young I used to lock my keys in my car on an semi-regular basis before I finally trained myself out of it). Guys are generally generous enough to engage in the lovely game that is “get the twisty wire hanger to the tiny out of reach door lock” for people.
And any able-bodied person that is out of gas can walk to a gas station, leave their drivers license or other collateral and get a gas can and gas to walk back to their car. And if it is a legitimate request, most “normal” people are going to approach it a lot less “polished and practiced” than your typical panhandler.
Generally, if approached for money, I ask the person if they are hungry. If they say yes, I offer to go buy them something. I have had people take me up on the offer, and I go and buy the food for them.
I don’t mind helping even people who are lazy and refuse to work (I’m talking about people who are obviously able bodied and able minded), but I will NOT contribute to them buying drugs, alcohol or ciggarettes.
Well, we could have been car-jackers or murderers…but I guess we have honest faces. 
It’s a vibe. I think people can tell. Problem is, some people don’t trust their instincts.