Crime worth the sentence
I just got through reading the article in WHT about the fraud welfare recipients who were sentenced. I suspect that the reason such crimes continue to exist is because it is worth the risk. The violators look at the welfare system and scoff at the way it is being administrated. It seems that those who work in that field, work hard at getting people qualified to receive aid when the effort should be to get them employed and self-sufficient.
This story reminded me of days past when our family was in that predicament. My dad had just died at age 49 after being sick for a year, the year was 1949. By that time, all of the savings were used up, and charge accounts at the grocery stores were maxed out. There were no good paying jobs available that my mother could find to support her five children all of whom were school-aged.
The only other means of support was to apply for welfare, which was an embarrassing thing to do in that time era. Pride meant starvation and thievery meant incarceration (if caught).
My mom swallowed her pride and applied for government assistance. We, as kids, were all embarrassed but mom would not allow the older sons to quit school and get jobs. We had an old beat up car and lived 5 miles out of town.
The welfare representative assigned to our case was a lady who was obviously prejudiced against Hawaiians. She signed us up for welfare but required that we go and pull weeds in the carrot patch of a man who was also on welfare but of the same nationality as she was. So every Saturday, we drove to his home and pulled weeds as he watched us from his porch while sitting on a rocking chair.
After a month, that welfare lady told my mother that she needed to get rid of the one old automobile we had. Mom argued that we needed the car to survive. The lady suggested walking to town for shopping and weekend walks to pull weeds. With that, my mother who was able to lift a 100-pound sack of rice with one hand, lost her cool and told the lady “take your check and shove it up your a**.” She then told the lady to leave before things got physical. She left and the support checks stopped.
The five of us boys celebrated my mother’s decisive action and that day we decided to look for jobs. That week, I asked a haole man named Mr. Finch if he had a job for me after school. He did, so on my way home from school every day, I would get off the school bus at his house, do whatever chores he had, then walk the three miles home before dark.
I was 12 years old and received 25 cents for my after school job. Bread cost 10 cents a loaf and a can of sardines also costs 10 cents each. My three older brothers also got jobs and we survived on a few dollars along with fishing, hunting, a vegetable, and wild fruits to supplement our groceries.
That incident made us proud to be a family and it never hurt us. The thieves we read about being tried in court for welfare fraud should be given greater punishment than that they received. No class, no shame!
Leningrad Elarionoff
Waimea