when I got home just now there was an odd message on my machine.
It was a woman who sounded older but not super old. She said she was calling for my name and said her name. The last name she gave is the same as mine, a fairly common last name.
The name on the caller id showed the first name she gave but a different last name and showed the number she gave.
She said she was looking for a nice home and for me to call her back if I knew where she could go.
That was all.
When I looked up her phone number it was listed under the name on the caller id. Whitepages.com also listed an approximate age of 55-59. (then I looked up my own number, which is listed, which showed a quite accurate estimate of my age! Eep!)
My gut instinct is dementia or some kind of mental illness.
Sounds like an old woman calling for a relative, maybe she’s not quite right, but that doesn’t mean dementia, just could be confusion. It could easily be a scam though, find someone with your last name and pretend to be a relative, that one goes far back in time.
Was this last night? There’s something called “sundowning” in dementia cases where the patient becomes agitated, confused, disoriented in late afternoon to evening.
So, I may get laughed into next week, but here’s my suggestion.
If your gut instinct is to be concerned, call the non-emergency police number and explain what happened to the officer who answers. Depending on the area, they might be able to do a wellness check, or know of an agency that can check up on the person to make sure they’re okay. (Again, this depends on your area.)
If my relative were confused and doing this, I’d really like for someone to let the police know.
What am I missing? Why not just call her back and clarify what her intention is? You are under no obligation to give her more information about yourself, money, or a place to live, but you could call her back and see what is up with her. If she does show signs of dementia, you could call the authorities so maybe she could get help. If it appears to be a scam, you can bait her and then come back and entertain us with stories. Isn’t this the decent thing to do?
I’m thinking, since its a fairly common name (possibly her maiden name), she was looking for a relative and got confused. I wouldn’t rule out scam but I wouldn’t put money on it either. Did she ask for you by first name or use your first name?
I have a really uncommon last name but there are at least a couple others with it in my region and one has the same first name. We’ve gotten calls enough for each other that we usually call and exchange them (messages) and actually got together for dinner once. Any relationship is 6+ generations back but we still like to call each other “Cousin”.
If she was just looking for a relative with your name and got your number in error, there wouldn’t be a problem. It’s the “looking for a nice home and call back if you know where I could go” that makes the call odd. That’s a strange way of phrasing whatever she’s trying to ask.
I like GrumpyBunny’s suggestion. The police get similar calls regularly and don’t mind them. I once passed an odd call on and the receptionist at the non-emergency line recognized the name and thanked me. “She’s forgotten to take her pills again. We’ll send someone over.”
I once lived in an area that had a 666 telephone exchange, my number was 666-6527. There was an elderly lady named Bertie that had a very good friend named Marla, whose telephone number was 666-5271. Almost every time she would ring up Marla, she would add an extra 6 when dialing and get me instead. I can’t count the number of times she would call our house, I would answer and hear her say, “Is Marla there?”. I would reply, “Hello Bertie, you misdialed again.” She would say “Excuse me”, hang up and call us back the next day.
I offered to come over and program Marla’s number into her speed dial, but she said that wasn’t necessary. I had regular conversations with Bertie for about 4 years.
I took GrumpBunny’s suggestion and called the police. When I looked for a non-emergency number I found they had several locations for “Community Services” and one of them was very close to the address associated with the phone number. The person I talked to said that this was the kind of thing they looked into and they would check it out. The person also warned me to be wary of phone scams.
The police never call back to let you know how things turned out, but if there’s ever anything more I’ll report back.
wow, the police did call back! Just to tell me I’d done the right thing. When they contacted the apartment management they found out the caller had been causing them some concern as well and the police gave the case to …um…something like “crisis management”…got the sense this was not the police but some other town agency.
The officer just wanted to let me know the woman was getting help, that my worries about her state were correct, and to thank me for the call.
And I must say, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to call the police if it hadn’t been suggested here, so the woman is getting help thanks to the Straight Dope.
Something similar happened to me some years ago. When I called back the old lady, she seemed even more confused than in her message. I called the police, they said “thanks” but seemed mostly unconcerned, and I doubt they did anything about it.
