8 Comments to 'Is this a problem in your Knoxville neighborhood?'
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Is this a problem in your Knoxville neighborhood?
Posted By katie allison granju
I live in Old North Knoxville, and as I’ve written recently, it’s still a transitional sort of neighborhood.
One of the things we deal with quite a lot in the ‘hood is people knocking on our doors with some made-up story designed to separate the homeowner from a relatively small amount of money - usually $20 or less. It’s such a common occurrence that it’s fairly frequent topic on our neighborhood e-mail list. Usually the person asking is obviously in pretty dire straits - clearly drunk or strung out. Generally, the asker isn’t too pushy; they just appear at your door and explain in a slurry rush that the car is broken down and the rent is due and the cat is missing or whatever, and then ask for $8, and when you decline, they politely leave and move on to other houses on the street. The most common time this happens seems to be between 9pm and midnight.
Yesterday, though, we had an unusual one. A guy came by at about 6:45 am as we were all in a rush to get kids to school and adults to work. It was still dark outside, and very cold. I heard the knocking and went to the door and saw a very clean cut-looking guy on my front porch looking sheepish and really cold. Through the locked glass door I asked him his business and he said his name was thusandsuch and that he lived “right up the street.”
“I’ve locked myself out of the house,” he explained.
Because I’m an overly trusting softie who grew up in a very small town, I let him into our foyer as my husband walked in from the kitchen. The man immediately stuck his hand out to shake Jon’s hand and repeated his name, and then told us this convoluted story, complete with bizarre and unnecessary details (his father was “the fire chief over at the Inskip station” and his wife “needed to get to work at her job at the News Sentinel”) about how he was locked out of the house, his car was out of gas at the BP station up the street, and how his wife and two year old daughter were waiting at the gas station. He said he’d put $17 in gas into the car before realizing he had no money and was locked out of the house and now he was very embarrassed, but needed some neighborly help to get this all straightened out.
He never actually asked for the $17, but it was clear that’s what he wanted. His story was so convincing - though it made no sense whatsoever - and he was so clean cut that I found myself apologizing for the fact that I didn’t have $17 in cash and for the fact that I wasn’t comfortable handing over my debit card for him to take up the street to the gas station.
As soon as it became clear we weren’t giving him any money, he was gone. And as soon as he was gone, my husband and I realized how stupid his tale was, yet how convincing he’d been. This guy just didn’t look or sound like our usual late night porch beggars. This guy looked and sounded like he might sell you shoes at Sears or help you troubleshoot your cell service problems.
Today, my next door neighbor told me he’d come by their house an hour earlier that same day - at 5 am - with pretty much the same story but without the weird details he’d given us. She also told me of another recent visitor - a woman - who had told the incredible and tear-jerking tale of being left with the foundling offspring of her murdered daughter and how she needed money to buy infant formula so the baby wouldn’t starve to death.
Now in my opinion, knocking on someone’s front door with that story in an attempt to pick up $10 took some serious chutzpah.
I’ve never lived anywhere with this sort of ongoing problem of people knocking on doors looking for money via made-up sob stories. And I am wondering how many houses they have to hit up in this way before they hit the payout. I mean, they must have some success with this method of panhandling for them to keep doing it.
Is this something you encounter in your own Knoxville neighborhood? Or has it been a problem in other places where you’ve lived?
Dec 19th, 2007
Slightly off topic, but
At the less nice Kroger on Broadway one night a woman asked for a ride to the end of the street. I asked her which street, and she indicated Broadway southbound. I didn’t point out to her at the time, but the end of that particular road is a few hundred miles away and in Florida.
We had the exact same story - and, it sounds like, the exact same clean cut, nice looking guy - in our neighborhood in South Knox. Only that time, he’d been at the Ken Jo on the corner and he lived three doors down from us. Even went so far as to say, “You know, the house right next door to Mike?” And yes, there is a Mike who lives there so it was a very credible story. He came to our place at about 11:45 at night. He promised he had cash in his house and he could pay me back the next day.
It would have been very credible - except that someone had already posted about this guy on our neighborhood listserve, and several people had responded and listed MANY occasions when the same guy (who drove a white car) had come to their houses with the same story. Apparently, he lives somewhere near us and the cops had arrested him several times for this exact same thing. He’s a heroin addict, though you would never know from talking to him.
When I lived in Inskip I didn’t have the problem of people trying to hit me up for money. People never stopped trying, however, when I went downtown every day.
All we get are the Jehovah’s witnesses and the guys selling new siding.
As you already may know Katie, he is all over the 37917 area.
i used to get them all the time when we lived in long beach ca. but now that we are in a gated community here in “the oc” hardly ever…here though, they will “will leave their drivers license as collateral”
Yup, this guy, or someone very much like him, has worked south Knoxville for quite awhile. I think most of us over here have learned the scam, tho.
Now we another one going on - some guys who offers to clean your gutters, etc. But he’s more dangerous; he apparently cases your house and comes back to rob it. He’s well known to the police so we have pics. Next time he comes round I sure hope somebody recognizes him.
We continually have this going on at our home. We live on a dead end street in South Knox. I have been visited by all of the above. There is also someone who has portrayed heating people coming to the door. They have a piece of paper with just he digits of our home (clearly written as they pulled up) & claim they aren’t sure what street it is. Every time, I call the police. One can not be too safe, especially with people casing your home & trying to gain entrance to rob you. I dont even open the door to them, just talk to them through the window. I HATE this. Makes me feel unsafe in my home.