My next question deals with the safety of buses. I personally know a bus driver that works up to sixteen hours a day – taking on more and more overtime hours. So how is this safe for the people on the bus. I would have thought there would have been some limits on the maximum amount of hours that Workers Compensation Board would consider safe! Does noone check how many hours drivers take in a day? Oh and did I mention that this same overworked driver used to talk on his cellphone while driving?

Just before Christmas I helped a client deal with the eviction of her husband from the family home. This was a courageous step for my client who felt intimidated by her husband. She had legal counsel and was following all the steps accordingly. In order to avoid any domestic abuse situation I called the Coquitlam RCMP to ask for a police car to standby while he was removing his belongings from the home. First the telephone operator tried to put me off by saying that they do not do this at all. After a bit of a conversation wherein I advised him that yes they do and can provide this service he put me through to the constable in the radio room. This charming constable advised me a) that the police could not sit in front of the house for an indeterminate time (this is after i told her we had it timed to within five minutes) b) THIS WAS A CIVIL MATTER – have I heard this more than once folks???? c) Why did she not speak to him through a window and leave his stuff on the porch d) Why would she do this on a Friday afternoon before Christmas because this was not fair (this is not up to her to judge I might point out) e) THIS WAS A CIVIL MATTER f) i asked if there was an assault what the estimated time of arrival be and i was told g) THIS WAS A CIVIL MATTER. Finally after a lengthy discussion with this woman I told her I was quite appalled that the RCMP were still dealing with matters of this kind this way – only several weeks ago a woman was killed in Surrey in almost the identical situation! I gave up – we set it up with some private investigators and the matter was handled by advising the man he was being videotaped! Shame on the RCMP! When are you going to deal with spousal abuse seriously? This is long overdue!

Why is Zellers charging GST and HST? I have not had time to look into this but if you know let me know.

Since when is the Center of the Universe located near Kamloops Pamela – please explain!!!!

How does a therapist measure success? How does the client measure sucess? Are the criteria the same?

Why is it mandatory at SFU that you must be a prof or a graduate student to be a philosopher?? Since when did philosophical thought require academic approval? Terribly oldfashioned and stereotypical approach.

Why is a private investigator I recently interviewed maintaining his own private database on all subjects of his surveillance? This is definitely wrong!! wrong!!! Something to do with privacy law and notifying people of data collection!

So thats it for the first week of the year and my questions. I know I have missed several that popped up during my time off but those will be asked of the universe on the next full moon (OR SOONER DEPENDING HOW AGGRAVATED I GET UPON MY RETURN TO WORK).

Til next time – your fav pi – over and out!

Q;My girlfriend live in Arizona (I live in Vancouver) and calls me 65 times a day. I can’t answer my cellphone because I am a bus driver and she gets very angry. We have been dating for a year now and this is a pretty regular occurrance. The problem is that when she can’t reach me she leaves nasty message where she calls me all kinds of names. I know that when I am with her she loves me but she worries about me cheating when we are apart. How do I deal with this?

A: Get a new number and get on with your life. This woman is a stalker and you are a fool.

Q:My boyfriend gets really jealous when I dress up and look good. How do I handle this?

A: Get a new boyfriend. Someone who appreciates a good looking woman.

Q:I have been dating my boyfriend for a year now and everything is great. However when we are along and he is on the computer and I enter the room he slams it shut. What does this mean?

A: It means he is prowling the internet dating sites or chat rooms. Check the history section of the internet. If he cleans it out put on a program that can monitor his activities, validate your suspicions. and then bunt him out the front door. Dishonesty is not acceptable in relationships.

Q: I have been dating a married man for the past year. He is going to leave his wife as soon as his two kids graduate (which is this year). He is just not ready to do so yet as he doesn’t want to disrupt his kids lives. How much time after graduation should I give him?

A: So you are not a disruption to his kids lives now? Get real. He has a commitment that he is not doing a good job of honoring. So why do you want this guy? Low on self respect are we? You don’t give him any time – get out.

Q: I am 18 and love my boyfriend of 2 years. We spend all out time together. I have given up all my activities so we can be together. Our parents are not too happy about this. What should I do?

A: Of course your parents are not happy about this. Whether you are in love or not you need to have your own activities and interests. Otherwise you become a big boring person to everyone around you. Trust me, nooone wants to hear about your “boyfriend” and what makes him great for 2 years.

Well folks, that’s about all the wisdom I can dispense today. Frankly I find it exhausting when I read about some of your lives.

Just remember my words of the week – when someone is married that means they have made a commitment to that person. If it is easy to break that commitment with you then you are not that important either.

Thanks for reading ,

Mae B. Stern

As a private investigator I have women tell me about their abusive lives – this is not always physical abuse folks. Often this involves emotional and financial abuse. Don’t misunderstand me though – there is often the threat of or the reality of physical abuse. Lets discuss two situations.
My first example – lets call her Jan. Jan was a single mother for years – struggling at minimum wage jobs to make ends meet. Jan was not a saint though – because in real life we aren’t saints and nobody is perfect. She enjoyed going to bars and picking up men – of all ages. Over the years I came to realize that her respect of self was suffering. She is a smart woman that chose to live in the lower pockets of society. Nevertheless she raised a wonderful child and saved enough money to buy herself a one bedroom apartment. Wonderful! I was happy for her. Shortly after she moved into the apartment she met “the man of her dreams”. He wined her, dined her, danced her and bought her flowers. She was impressed. But you know that saying – If it sounds too good to be true…. Over the next 5 years she became a fearful woman, that ran home to make dinner and accomodate this mans needs, she gave up all pretense of being independent, was paying all the bills (He worked but felt entitled to spend his money on his needs)and became more and more depressed and subservient. Why? Well Jan had been looking for a man to take care of her for years, she wanted a nice home and this man was capable to doing renovations, she wanted to be loved but ultimately the price was too high. She contacted me when she wanted him to leave the home and wanted protection. It is going to take her years, if ever, to recover from this scenario. It is far from over – he is still there.

My second example is Karen. Karen has been a successful teacher for years. For 3 years she dated her partner, then they married. They met online. He presented well – was a successful businessman that travelled the world. She saw her dream of a beautiful home and a wonderful retired life become a reality. After 5 years of marriage she found out he had been cheating with multiple women for the majority of the time. We are not talking about an affair here – we are talking about down and out straight forward Craigslist type of sex. How many women? Who knows. Devastating for Karen – yes, absolutely. Was she hurt? Profoundly. Is he going to change – well he says so. Yet he still speaks to her in a condescending manner and does not address her needs. This man is 60 yrs old, she is his fourth wife, he cheated on the three before her. Would you bet on these odds? I would not. This woman argued that marriage is so important that one has to work on it to the exlusion of their own needs – in other words she was going to help him change and be the man she thought he was capable of. being. Ya – ya. This client stayed in her beautiful home, believed that he would change and finally hired us to confirm that he wasn’t cheating on his upcoming trips.

As I was writing this article, my former assistant Nicole, called me from Ottawa where she resettled about 5 years ago. She reminded me of another case and said that when she tells the story to her friends they can’t believe it. Nicole said “I tell them that all these weird things you see on TV when it comes to relationships and lies – it is just like that in real life. If I had not worked for a private investigator I would not have believed it myself!” We shared a laugh and I hung up saying to myself – it is a dark world, people are not honest with each other, people want to believe the best, people want the fantasy. Why not? The fantasy is so much better than the reality. Of course it is but it is not real.

It is these desires than can put a person in a bad place. It is these desires that can give a woman a reason to forgive bad behavior. It is these desires than allow her partner to behave in a selfish manner.

Aging is I think scary for the majority of women. So is their need for financial security. Thats why they believe the stories con men invent. The con man, the abuser, knows this. They feel it instinctively – they move karmically towards these women. By the time the woman realizes she’s been lied to she is in deep.

My job is to sort out the truths from the lies. I provide the ear, the information, the laid person counselling – sometimes it makes no difference in the woman’s pursuit of her fantasy. Over the years I have learned truth is a tricky thing to be in possession of.

The other night my daughter and I were viewing my wedding album. In retrospect I enjoyed the pictures, the happy faces, the activities, the effort I had gone to making my wedding personal. After we went through the album I turned to my 18 year old daughter and said – “Too bad the pictures don’t reflect the reality of the day or the marriage.” Nobody took a picture of the woman that showed up with her husband to the church and claimed that my prospective husband had promised to marry her. I still have no idea what that was about. I didn’t know at the time that I was marrying an abuser! Love – it is a strange, unpredictable and unreliable matter.
That was many years ago. Today people are seeking their matches all across the planet – via online dating. I have been drawn into this world through my profession. I have been a private investigator now for twenty years. My first online dating file was three years ago. A woman called me and asked me if I could locate the man she was corresponding with. He had promised to come visit her, here in Vancouver, on three separate occasions and of course, each time something pre-empted the visit. She had his “alleged name and identity” but could not understand the behaviour. I found him in New York, of course with a different name and identity. One of the nastiest parts of the investigation was finding out that “the baby” he had introduced to my client in pictures was not his but was in fact a picture that was cut and pasted from Flicker. The rest of his family was handpicked from Flicker as well. He was not a top criminal lawyer but was in fact a corporate paper-pusher. Are you wondering if he was married ? Of course he was! This long distance relationship went on for almost a year. Then there was the male nurse that pretended to be a doctor and cut and paste his fake name into articles about successful doctors to email to another client.
Diane, my client contacted me after she found out her husband of 15 years was spending his evenings looking on Ashley Madison (the marrieds only dating site)! We were able to introduce a prospect to him that he communicated with for over a month complaining about his marriage and offering our “false” person wonderful travelling opportunities. Recently,a close friend just found out that the man she met online dating and thought she was happily married to had been cheating on her for the past 4 years – again with online dating! What about the man that played “Dexter” in Edmonton and cut up a person he had enticed on Craigslist? Go to our website if you want to hear the interviews on some of these cases – www.bakerstreetagency.com

I think by now you are forming an impression of what I think about online dating. The truth is that I too am a single woman and find the dating world complicated, exhausting and overwhelming. There is no question that most of us are happier when in love, we have a glow about us, and generally feel more optimistic about life. But here is the biggest issue with most online dating – I question what drives the women to accept the nonsense they are being told? Dating online is no different to dating in person – desperation to have a partner is not a healthy motivator. In the over 30 cases I have worked on now I have dealt with intelligent, motivated, successful women who for some strange reason suspend all their skills and accept what is being told to them by the person on the other end. Remember my wedding album? Pictures do not reflect everything that is real. My motto is “If it sounds/looks too good to be true then it is.”
Here are some tips for online dating:
1. Ensure your privacy is protected (we have also helped two clients that were stalked)
2. Look at the picture – is it current or does it look old
3. If meeting in person arrive early, park at a distance from the location, leave last and monitor his exit.
4. Don’t believe everything you are told – listen and look for contradiction.

Love for love in a healthy way. Next month we will provide you with more tips to maintain your safety and why you should consider hiring an investigator to check the facts before you become a victim. Have a Safe Valentines Day!