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An elderly woman says to be on the lookout after she was scammed by a man posing as a city worker.
Hazel Wood, 82, said she is still mad after a knock at her door late Monday evening. "He said, 'Ms. Wood', hello, who are you?"
Wood said it was a man claiming to be from the water department. He escorted her to the kitchen and he told her, she says, area construction was causing problems with the water.
"Naturally, it didn't dawn on me that he was crook," she said, "he said 'oh no, you can't drink this water, Ms. Wood'."
Then she said he told her to remove the pans that were underneath the sink. Wood can barely move her arms because of arthritis.
"After I started pulling the pans from outta there then this other man shows up."
A second "worker" came to the kitchen briefly, then closed the door. Wood said that she didn't see the man after that and that she believed that he was the one who ransacked her home.
"Can you believe that he went upstairs and went in every dresser drawer I got up there," she told reporter Jennifer Donelan.
She said even her suitcases that she kept in her closest were tossed on the floor.
"He tumbled them upside down."
Meanwhile, the man in the kitchen asked Wood to take him to the basement, but she refused. Outside the home, a third man preoccupied the next door neighbor about lawn work.
"We'll treat it, trim it, cut it. We don't charge but $15.00 so I knew that was wrong, but all the same time I didn't know two men were inside her house."
When the two men left the house to get supposed equipment, Wood emerged from the kitchen. She said the first thing she saw were her desk drawers open and cabinets ransacked. Everything had been rummaged through.
"I said this is a scam!"
Wood wanted to warn everyone about the lesson she learned, "Don't open up your door unless you've called somebody to come to your house!"
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