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| HUMOR: Fibroid Tumors in Spain |
| Bill Hudson | 6/15/12 |
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| Back to the News Summaries |
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An email appeared in my Gmail account yesterday saying it was from Steve Vassallo.
Sorry to bother you with this. Am presently in Spain with my ill Cousin. She's suffering from a critical uterine fibroid and must undergo hysterectomy surgery to save her life.
I really didn't expect to get an email of any kind from my old friend Stevo — a self-professed "economic development" expert who was hired back in the summer of 2010 to head up the Pagosa Springs Community Development Corporation — had lived in Pagosa for less than one year, but had managed to generate quite a few semi-sarcastic articles in the Daily Post beginning with his very first public presentation.
 Perhaps coincidentally, I'd received a phone call last week from Snyder, TX from a gentleman who resides there, and I was told that Synder, TX had hired Stevo as their economic development expert — paying him $75,000 a year while asking him to work only one week per month. According to the phone caller, Stevo had promptly increased the economic vitality of Synder by organizing a big “folk music festival” featuring his friends from Nashville, Dickey Lee and Buzz Cason.
The economic revival of Snyder was rather dramatic as a result of Stevo’s musical event, according to a 2011 report posted on the Abilene-based ReporterNews.com website:
Crowds have ranged from 50 to 250 people. Nearby businesses offer cold drinks, and on Thursday the East Side Church of Christ set up a tent selling ice cream to fund a service project trip to Houston.
Stevo had planned a similar event here in Pagosa Springs, and he'd enlisted a number of supporters to help promote the event, including former commissioner Bob Moomaw and his wife Janis. You can read an interesting view of that proposed event in this 2011 Daily Post opinion piece by Pagosa resident Leanne Goebel.
Our own Pagosa music festival never materialized — but I was still surprised that Stevo would single me out as the right person to help him with his cousin’s fibroid emergency. The email continued:
I am deeply sorry for not writing or calling you before leaving, the news of her illness arrived to me as an emergency and that she needs family support to keep her going, I hope you understand my plight and pardon me. Hysterectomy surgery is very expensive here, so I want to transfer her back home to have the surgery implemented there. Am wondering if you can be of any assistance to me, I need about $3,000 to make the necessary arrangement; I traveled with little money due to the short time I had to prepare for this trip and never expected things to be the way it is right now.
Well, I certainly found it surprising that Stevo would decide to travel with “little money” considering how much Pagosa Springs paid him during his tenure here as our economic development guru. But I’m always willing to be surprised by my friends.
The email continued:
I'll surely pay you back once I get back home, I need to get her home ASAP because she is going through a lot of pain at the moment and the doctor have advised that it is necessary the tumor is operated soon to avoid anything from going wrong. I will really appreciate whatever amount you can come up with, if not all. Get back to me ASAP.
Thanks,
Steve
Needless to say, I popped a check in the mail. ASAP. |
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