In the new movie Solo Mio, Kevin James plays Matt Taylor, a 60-something high school art teacher who is left at the altar by his fiancée because she can’t go through with their planned wedding.
Like many older people, Matt Taylor must decide whether simply to accept his lot in life or make the most of it. Not wanting to lose his nonrefundable tickets, he heads to Italy on his own.
Since almost a third of all Americans over the age of 65 live alone, they face similar dilemmas each day, as Chaucer and Shakespeare both put it, to “make a virtue of necessity.”
While surveys consistently show that older people want to remain in their own homes rather than go to assisted living centers or other communal arrangements, the abduction of NBC “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother Nancy Guthrie has prompted questions about the vulnerability of older people living alone.
Even though scams and fraud abound these days, with older people often targeted — former FBI agents and other law enforcement officials say that an apparent kidnapping of an 80-year-old woman is highly unusual.
Because her daughter is in a high profile media position, speculation in the case centers on revenge, attention or money as the potential motive of the kidnapper(s).
While a Fox News report from Tucson, where Nancy lives, reported concerns by neighbors about their safety following this apparent abduction, most experts emphasize such abductions are extremely rare. In fact, they are so infrequent that there are no statistics about them.
Often such abductions turn out to be initiated by a family member or friend rather than a stranger, says Dr. Mark Lachs, a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. Such family members or known acquaintances typically drive these relatives to a bank to force them to take money from an ATM or get cash in some other way, Dr. Lachs says — explaining that usually the aim is not to kidnap them.
I asked older friends and family members if they were concerned about abductions based on recent news reports about Nancy Guthrie. While concerned about Guthrie and her family, no one that I spoke to felt threatened themselves.
“I can’t really walk without assistance,” said Fiona Matthews laughingly. “Good luck to any kidnappers trying to get me out the door and into a car.”
“I have the doorbell Ring and cameras throughout the yard and house and monitor them regularly,” said Carolyn Platt. “I know who is at the door or in the driveway the moment they arrive.”
I also spoke to Tom Christlaw from Dixie Cable Tech, a company that installs home security systems, to see if they had any requests for upgrades or new installations in the wake of this recent news event. “I haven’t heard anyone locally expressing any concerns over it,” Christlaw told me.
More mundane things such as accident or health challenges tend to be more of what older people focus on. In addition, break-ins and burglaries are much more likely than abductions, experts say. So, what can be done to prevent them?
Burglars are most likely to pick targets not because they are vulnerable, James Lynch, Professor of Criminology at the University of Maryland says, but because they are more likely to have valuables that can easily be turned into cash such as laptops, guns and jewelry.
Lynch notes that simple acts like installing door bell monitoring systems like Ring, Arlo, or Nest can be significant deterrents against home invasions. Locking doors, as simple as it sounds, can also turn away a thief looking for easy entry into a home.
“My neighbors are my best deterrent,” says Stephanie Fackrell. “We watch each other’s houses not only when they are gone but also when we see someone or something that seems out of place.”
“No one wants a busy body for a neighbor,” she adds. “But when you have others’ best interest at heart you can pay attention without interfering in others’ business.”
Perhaps the most insidious outcome that could occur from incidents like Nancy Guthrie’s apparent abduction is that we become overly suspicious and skeptical of others. Those of us who were parents in the 1970s and 1980s remember the ubiquitous faces of missing children — apparent kidnap victims — on milk cartons.
They were everywhere. They stopped only when studies demonstrated the relatively small number of actual missing children, alongside the significantly heightened fear and anxiety in children that such reminders provoked.
That’s one of the byproducts of overreporting: it can do more harm than good. That doesn’t mean ignorance is bliss, but rather that overemphasizing something can create unintended negative consequences resulting in undesirable notoriety for would-be opportunists or copycat crimes (research on suicide and eating disorder “contagion” marks similar inadvertent spread that can come from unwise public messaging).
There are still so many unknowns in the Nancy Guthrie case that it is much too early to draw any conclusions. The second best thing we can do right now is to let law enforcement do their work and avoid drawing any premature conclusions.
In an article entitled, “Savannah Guthrie’s nightmare is unfolding on our screens,” Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse writes about “people who don’t know what to do with it,” as they are immersed in forensic news about the case. She highlights the many “who don’t seem to understand that just because it’s happening on a screen doesn’t mean it’s happening for your entertainment.”
What’s the best response at this point? Turn it off. Go for a walk. Talk to your grandkids. Ignore it. Otherwise, as we say in the oil business where I used to work, you are just grinding on junk.
Rather than recoiling and further isolating with unsettling news, the best thing we can do is get to know our neighbors.