Monday, September 20, 2010

Break a leg on "Dancing with the Stars" Bristol! (I mean that in a good way of course.)

I wanted to take a moment and wish the mother of my nephew good luck tonight on her first big dancing debut.

I sincerely hope that she does well and is starting to feel confident in her performance.

I'm sure a few of you are wondering why in the world I am addressing this on my blog, but it really is the only way that I can reach out to her.

I am also wondering if I should look for my nephew in the stands.

I guess the only way for my family to find out is to look for him this evening while we watch the show together. It's sad to say that if we do see him in the audience that it will be the first time in months.

Maybe Bristol will soon be willing to accept my (and my families) offer of help. We would love to watch Tripp time from time now that she has such an action packed schedule. I'm sure she can use the help.

Anyway, I just wanted to send out my support since, regardless of our rocky relationship, she is the mother of my beautiful nephew.

(I will have to be truthful though and admit that as much as I want Bristol to do well my vote is going toward the SITUATION.)

Monday, September 6, 2010

The man who set my mother up

[caption id="attachment_315" align="alignnone" width="278" caption="Junior Latocha"][/caption]

This is Junior Latocha, and HE is the reason that my mother was arrested in 2008 and why people STILL refer to her as an addict and a drug pusher, even though neither is true.

The man that set my mother up was someone I never would have expected. Perhaps I would not have been so upset if the person who virtually destroyed my mother’s life was not aware of her circumstances and physical condition, but he was well aware. In fact recognizing her vulnerability was probably what inspired him to target her in the first place.

He is the older brother of one of my “friends”, and I have known the Latochas for almost 8 years.

I went to school with his younger brother and once in awhile even hung out with him. They all knew my mom was physically disabled, had chronic pain, and was in the process of losing her husband of 23 years, which resulted in both depression and heartache. And of course they also knew that she had pain pills.

I really thought that since the whole town knew of my mother’s condition that the last thing anyone, especially one of my “friends”, would ever do was victimize her further. Really the ONLY reason that Junior was able to manipulate her into selling her pills was because she was having a battle with her insurance company. They wanted her to come up with $800 more each time she got a new prescription filled. There was simply no way she could ever afford that, she could barely even afford to put gas in the car, and without her medications she would become so deathly ill she would have to go to the hospital. My mother’s pain was absolutely unbearable, so she was desperate to come up with the money somehow

It is still a mystery as to how Junior got my mother’s phone number because the phone she was using was originally Bristol’s phone. (My mom bought both Levi and Bristol new phones right after she found out that Bristol was pregnant because Sarah refused to pay for hers anymore. But after one of Levi and Bristol’s many fights she SHIPPED her phone back to my mom in the MAIL. Since my mom had been using an old brick phone she decided to upgrade to Bristol’s Blackberry and got rid of her old one). So I don't know whether Bristol was in contact with Junior, or if he just did his research to find my mother’s number. We are still confused by the circumstances leading up his initial contact.

He started out texting her everyday at first, often multiple times in the same day, trying to convince her to sell her prescription medication. Then later he started to call and talk to her on the phone.

He worked very hard at convincing my mother to sell her pills and used all of the things he knew about her and our family to wear her down. He said things like “I know you have kids, and I know you need the money. What are you going to let them starve? Your husband is leaving you, he is gone now! What other choices do you have? You’re disabled! This is the only way to feed and put your kids through school!”

After months of this kind of persistence unfortunately she gave in because she was desperate to find a way to pay for her medication and to buy food for the family. She is very ashamed of that decision and I know she regrets it every minute of every day.

What my mother could not have known was that Junior Latocha was working undercover for the police in an agreement that would significantly lessen his own sentence. (Word on the street is that the police wanted someone connected to the Palins in order to get back at Sarah. I don’t know if that is true, but I wouldn’t doubt it.) When my mother's insurance company finally fixed the glitch in December, and started paying for ALL of her medications, she refused to sell anymore of her pills to Junior. He tried numerous times to convince her to give in and sell him a few, but she stood firm. Interestingly enough it was only after she STOPPED selling her medications that the police came to arrest her.


The police officer in charge of my mother’s case acknowledged that she believed they had made a mistake in allowing Junior to set my mom up. She said that although what my mom did was wrong she understood the motivation to want to put food on the table, and to keep the heat and electricity turned on.

I heard one police officer say, even while they were going through our house looking for evidence of a drug operation, that “This lady is not a criminal she is just trying to survive, this is down right sad.”


My mom wasn’t a drug dealer like Junior Latocha. She was just trying to do all that she could to get by. I am not saying that what she did was okay, but I too understand why she did it.

Junior on the other hand is an actual DRUG DEALER who is STILL actively selling drugs to people in not only Wasilla and Palmer, but also Anchorage! I have heard from various people I know that he is the biggest Oxycontin dealer in the Valley who receives packages through the mail with hundreds of Oxycontin pills to sell, and I know for a FACT he is still out there selling because I have seen him!! I have also heard that his relationship with the police has changed and that now he is avoiding them for fear of getting arrested again. Yet I still see him around town sometimes and I just saw him just the other day at the State Fair.

I swear it makes me sick to my stomach every time I see that scum!

I really wanted to put this information out for everybody to see even though this could be dangerous for me. You never know what these people are capable of, and I have seen this group do some pretty awful things to people.

But I will not stop until I see justice done for my family. I do not think the sentence my mother got was fair. How was it that Todd’s sister could rob multiple houses to feed her drug addiction, with her four year old daughter along for the ride, and receive such a light sentence? How did Junior get off just by agreeing to set up a poor lady desperate to reduce her pain and care for her family? How are THEY less deserving of a harsher sentence than my mother?

Today Junior Latocha continues his life of crime, and keeps spreading his poison throughout the Valley with no end in sight, while my mother is a virtual prisoner in her own home.

So you tell me, where is the justice?

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Bristol Palin, Dancing with the Stars, and the missed opportunity to make a REAL difference

Many of my readers keep asking what I think about Bristol being part of the cast on “Dancing with the Stars.” I at first hesitated to respond to that because I do not want my blog to be focused on Bristol Palin.



However, I noticed that the questions keep coming so I feel that I need to address them.



Once I found out that Bristol would be one of the cast members on “Dancing with the Stars” I was honestly somewhat shocked and a little disgusted. How can Levi and our family see Tripp while she is away in LA practicing her dance routines? That was my first concern. It has been months since I last saw my precious nephew and now it is clear that it will be many more months before I see him again.


Along with my constant concern for my nephew, what really bothered me, with all due respect to other teen mothers out there, is that I believe this is sending the WRONG message to other teens.



They’re going to look at this as, Bristol Palin got pregnant as a teen, and now she is famous! They will see her being offered multiple opportunities, being cast on a sitcom, joining the cast of “Dancing with the Stars”, all while making hundreds of thousands of dollars. For many teens it will appear that the road to success is through unprotected sex.



I really hope that the media will realize that this kind of thing is sending the message to other young teens that this is glamorous and a way to get a lot of attention. Since Bristol became pregnant, and made headlines world wide, teen pregnancy in Wasilla has sky rocketed!



Everywhere I look I see somebody who is expecting a new baby. If you go into a public restroom there is writing on the walls saying:



“Is it bad that I’m 15 and want a baby soooo bad?”

“I would give anything to have a baby!”

“I want to be a mommy at 14!”



And many other extremely disturbing and jaw dropping messages. I think that having Bristol on television dancing along with those other so-called celebrities is just going to reinforce the idea in the minds of many teens that having a baby can make you glamorous and famous, and you will get tons of attention. Which of course is absolutely ridiculous! Yet many of these girls are just screaming for attention and believe this is a way to get it.


After I read those messages on the restroom wall, I actually took a picture of them with my cell phone because I was so completely shocked by how many young girls are writing them. It seems that it is becoming a trend!



I showed my dad the pictures, and at first he was wondering why in the world I took a picture of the bathroom wall, but when I explained to him how many teens are TRYING to get pregnant in response to all of the attention, money, and fame that Bristol was receiving, he shook his head in disgust.



He just looked at me and we both immediately knew what the other was thinking. How sad these young girl’s lives must be for them to believe that becoming pregnant was their only hope of finding love and getting attention from those around them. I wish I could reach out to these young girls and explain to them that they have their whole lives ahead of them, and there are other ways to get attention without going out and sleeping around just to receive gifts at a baby shower, have people comment on your belly, and buy cute baby clothes.



I just don’t think many of them realize how many responsibilities come with a new baby, and that parenting is essentially a full time job that lasts the rest of your life.


I think that as a speaker for the Candie’s Foundation, and advocate for abstinence, that Bristol should be spreading a message that speaks to the difficulties of motherhood, and pounding home the idea that, yes she is now famous for being a teen mom, but THAT it is not the right decision for the majority of the teenage girls out there.



She should talk about just how hard it is to manage a “full time job and college” while being a “single mother”. Instead I believe she is focused on the opportunity to wear fancy gowns and jewelry, and appear fabulous on TV. Not exactly an opportunity offered to other single teenage mothers in this country.



I do hope she does well on the show, and I sincerely mean that! However for purely selfish reasons I hope she gets to come home sooner, rather than later, so that I can hopefully hold my nephew in my arms before too much time goes by.



Here is just some of the bathroom graffiti I have seen in Wasilla.