The Ugly of Life

I generally see the best in people. I trust people and I believe that people are inherently good. I still feel that way, but I definitely will keep more of a guard up because of some events that occurred during my transition to Tahoe.  I accepted a dream job in Tahoe as the Patrol Director/Safety Coordinator at Diamond Peak Resort.  In my transition week between Southern California and Tahoe I had the privilege of spending the week in Yosemite for Yosemite Facelift. If you don’t know what Facelift is, look it up! On the last day of the event I was rappelling the middle and lower falls of Yosemite Falls with a new friend and adventure partner. The day was amazing (and cold), but still a beautiful day! I even challenged myself to jump off a rock into water for the first time in my adult life! Which scared the sh*t out of me!

When we got back down to the valley floor and got to the bike racks where my bike was locked up with a cable lock, and my mountain bike was gone. Who steals bikes like that in beautiful National Parks? Ass holes do…. I filed a report with the Law Enforcement Rangers, but there is not much they can do. I was and am bummed, but at the end of the day, if that is the worst thing that happened, it’s still a pretty damn good day! A lot of worse things could have happened with the activities I was doing that day. And at least it’s just the bike this time, not everything like when my house burnt down.

The next day as I was driving to Tahoe to move into my temporary rental I was running about two hours late because of a slow start and searching for my bike. I called, texted and emailed my future tenant about the delay, but was not hearing back. The time we were supposed to meet came and went and still no contact. That was the moment I started to think it may be a scam. I called my dad to talk it through with him and we started to research. I did a quick search online and found the same rental listed as a vacation rental on VRBO but with different owners. The description was word-for-word copied to the Craigslist add I responded to and the pictures were all the same. This was the moment I knew I got scammed. I had paid the scammer a security deposit and 2 month’s rent through a transfer to their bank account. I knew there were housing scams, but I never thought it would happen to me. I have learned to copy and paste descriptions of rentals into google to see if another posting with the same description pops up. I know it would not have been possible for me to go visit the property before I moved, but I could have been more aware. I could have looked up the phone number and figured out it was a pay as you go burner phone. I could have noticed that the rental agreement had an address for the property that didn’t exist in Incline Village and that the “rental company” I was renting from did not have an address on it. If it says it is through a company, look the company up. I didn’t know to take these steps when I started my housing search, but I hope people can learn from my experiences.

So how has all of this affected me with my new start in life? To be honest, not much. Money comes and goes. Yes, it sucks, but dwelling in it will not make it go away or be any better. Learning from my experiences and looking towards what needs to happen next Is the best way for me to handle adversity like this. I can sit and dwell in it, or I can make actions that can keep me moving forward and progressing. Dwelling in the struggles and misfortunes of the past is not going to promote growth. Healing, living in the present and making moves for the future will promote growth.



And no matter what happened, this is now where I live and work, which is pretty incredible!