Results tagged “seniorcitizens”

CityRoom has a nice story about how some city school buses, empty during the day with kids in school, are being used to ferry senior citizens to supermarkets: "The elderly often have a difficult time finding fresh produce and healthful foods because of their limited mobility." The program also doesn't cost anything, since the school buses and drivers are there anyway; the city's Department of Aging said, "The fuel costs are in their contract, so there is no increase or decrease whether we used the buses or not."

Patrick Swayze once memorably declared to Jerry Orbach, "No one puts Baby in the corner." But now a group of older men in Staten Island are declaring to their condo's board that "no one puts Poppy in the corner" either. The group of New Springville seniors call themselves "The Fined Five" after receiving $25 fines last winter when the board decided that their usual kibitzing in the lobby was loitering. The property manager said that "it's not a 55-and-older building," but compromised by finding them an unoccupied studio to hang out in. But now the men complain that they're being confined, with one saying, "I can't stay inside my sheetrock walls all day; I'll go crazy." So the Fined Five is suing the board, saying that their banishment is illegal and unnecessary. A neighbor whose apartment is adjoined to the lobby tells the SI Advance, "It's a bunch of old guys sitting around and talking about their wartime remembrances and fixing the motors in their cars. They're a lovely bunch of gentlemen." When asked what they do there, one of the Five told the Post, "We don't play Johnny on the pony in the lobby."

Yesterday afternoon, eight vehicles were involved in a fatal crash on the NJ Turnpike that "prompted police to shut down a 25-mile southbound stretch of the highway for hours," the Star-Ledger reports. Apparently a tractor-trailer hit a Buick, which had stopped in the right (southbound) lane: "The impact caused the 2004 Buick LeSabre to become fully engulfed in flames and shift to the center lane, where it triggered a chain reaction involving six other vehicles." The Buick's driver and passengers, five people in their 70s, were all killed. One of the other cars was a Jeep containing three men from NYC, all of whom were injured; charges against the tractor-trailer driver are pending. The highway's hours-long closure hit travelers heading to the Jersey shore and Six Flags Great Adventure. NJ Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando told the Star-Ledger, "I don't really remember one this bad...Now it's just a matter of trying to figure out what happened down there."

The Staten Island Advance reports that thieves, posing as NYC Department of Environmental Protection employees, are targeting senior citizens. Apparently the robbers claim they must "check pipes, read or fix water meters, or collect cash for unpaid water bills," and they have struck five times in the last two months of 2008, taking jewelry, cash and credit cards. The DEP says its employees wear uniforms, show ID and never ask for cash, "We want to alert the community that this is going on and people have to be very careful." According to the Advance, cops think the robbers are part of a "roving band that travels up and down the East Coast, stopping only long enough to accumulate a haul and then leaving for another town before they get caught."