A LIFE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Veronika Piela is just getting clear of an ordeal that began when she was forced into a residence, then f led on a winter day, taking nothing but her walker, desperate to find someone who would believe her story and help her
Veronika Piela was living a quiet, independent life until a series of events spun her world out of control. Out of the blue, she was forced into a residence, a virtual prisoner, with no access to her life savings, branded incapable of functioning on her own. Now, three people face charges in the disturbing saga
Veronika Piela keeps a lot of photos in her room at a seniors’ residence in Rosemont.
They hang between religious paintings and lean on desks by jewelry boxes. There’s some of her family from Ukraine, and some of her deceased Polish husband, whom she met after being liberated from a German labour camp during the Second World War. There’s one of the hotel in Louiseville, near Trois- Rivières, where they worked after moving to Canada in the late 1940s — he as a cook, she as a maid.
But one stands out from the others: a recent photo of her sitting in a chair, a blond Montreal police officer standing behind her, smiling.
“She saved my life,” Piela, 92, says in broken English.
It was two years ago, in early February, that Piela sat shivering in the back of a police car, hysterical and asking for an officer who could speak Polish or Russian.
Police had just responded to a call from someone who had found her at the corner of Lacombe and Lavoie Sts. in Côte- des- Neiges, without a coat, standing in the snow with her walker.
She had run away from a residence a few blocks away, and kept repeating that she was going to kill herself if she was forced to go back there.
She told police she had been living there in a basement bedroom, without access to a phone or allowed to have visitors. The people who had brought her there, she says, had told the manager there was a court order imposing the restrictions — that she had Alzheimer’s and dementia. That she couldn’t be trusted.
One day, when she noticed the workers all occupied in the kitchen, Piela made a run for it. She took nothing but her walker, and trudged out into the cold.
Now, in the police car, she needed someone to listen to, and believe, her story — that people had taken control of her life, she says, and that roughly half a million dollars had been taken from her bank accounts.
In the summer of 2013, Piela was paying Anita Obodzinski, 51, to help out around her apartment — help clean up, do the groceries, feed the cats. Piela had no relatives nearby or children of her own, and her knees had gotten bad.
She knew Obodzinski’s mother from church bazaars, she said, where she would buy clothes from her.
When Piela noticed that money was missing from her purse one day, she says she confronted Obodzinski. She told her she wouldn’t be needing her help anymore, and thought that was the end of it.
But six months later, Obodzinski and her husband, Arthur Trzciakowski, showed up at Piela’s apartment and allegedly forced their way in, according to police reports later filed in a civil suit.
They wanted her to sign some documents, Piela says, but she refused. Police reports allege they squeezed her arms and “forcefully brought her into a room.”
Piela said in an interview that she was thrown on her bed, fell down, was sat on and roughed up. Her arms were cut in the struggle, she says.
“I said ‘ Please, take everything. Please, leave me alone. Leave me alive. I need that.’” Piela recently told the Montreal Gazette.
After they left, Piela says she called her pastor and notary, two of the only people she knows in Montreal. She was put in touch with a lawyer, Igor Dogaru, who sent a formal notice asking Obodzinski to no longer contact her.
What Piela says she didn’t know is that in the meantime, Obodzinski had prepared a mandate that would put her in control of Piela’s personal protection and belongings if Piela were ever to become incapacitated. She later claimed she was doing so as Piela’s niece — her late father and Piela’s late husband were brothers, she’d later write in an affidavit.
Obodzinski had hired a social worker to prepare a psychosocial report, and a doctor had produced a medical report — two documents needed for incapacity mandates in Quebec.
The reports say Piela suffered from irreversible Alzheimer’s and dementia, rendering her incapable of taking care of herself. They said she was living in squalor with cats, and had poor personal hygiene. That alcohol abuse made her a risk to herself.
“Mrs. Piela is unable to express herself within reason as her memory, insight and judgment are all severely impaired,” private social worker Alissa Kerner wrote in her psychosocial report.
The mandate was presented in court by lawyer Charles Gelber, Kerner’s husband, who was acting on behalf of Obodzinski.
It bore the signatures of Piela, Obodzinski and two witnesses, though a judge in a civil suit would eventually side with an expert saying that Piela’s signature had been forged. But that was later.
In December 2013, a special clerk at the courthouse put the mandate into effect, putting Piela under Obodzinski’s care.
A mandate in case of incapacity is also known as a protection mandate. It is more powerful than even the power of attorney. The mandate gives someone control over a person’s protection and well- being on top of managing their finances and property.
On Jan. 28, 2014, Montreal police received a call from Kerner, the social worker. Their reports show that she said there was an urgent situation involving an elderly woman who needed to be taken from her apartment and placed in a seniors’ home, and insisted it be done quickly.
Police called Kerner into the station, where they say she told them a priest who had power of attorney over Piela had stolen $ 800,000 from her.
Kerner told them she had been hired by Piela’s niece, who had a mandate. She said Piela was confused and living in inhabitable conditions.
Police repeatedly asked to see the mandate, but according to their reports, Kerner would only show a copy of the judgment she had on her phone.
The reports say Kerner insisted police remove Piela from her apartment. The police told her that if they saw that Piela needed help, they would send her to a hospital. But Kerner was adamant that Piela not go to a hospital, the reports say. Officers told her they didn’t have the power to move Piela, and that Kerner would need a court order to do it.
After Kerner left, police visited Piela. But they didn’t find her confused. She was feeding birds and squirrels outside. Her apartment smelled of cat urine, but seemed to be in order. So, they left her alone.
The next week, another knock at Piela’s door.
Obodzinski and Trzciakowski were back, this time with Kerner.
Police reports say Piela’s pastor was there with her, and answered the door, leaving the chain lock on.
Obodzinski had brought doughnuts and said she was coming to take care of Piela.
“That’s them. Don’t let them in,” Piela says she screamed. The pastor told them to leave, and they did.
A half- hour later, after the pastor had gone, the trio returned, allegedly breaking down the building ’s door and then Piela’s, who says she called her pastor and told him to call police at that point. The police reports claim Trzciakowski scoured Piela’s room, looking under her mattress and bed while Obodzinski and Kerner sat in the kitchen with Piela. Kerner took photos of the apartment. Someone ripped the phone out of the wall so Piela wouldn’t call anyone, the reports say.
The three were arrested but released after they told police it was a misunderstanding and showed them the mandate. No charges were filed.
A week later, in early February 2014, Piela discovered she could no longer access her money.
On Jan. 13 of that year, $ 283,349 was removed from her account with Scotiabank. Ten days later, $ 190,213 was withdrawn from her Royal Bank of Canada account. The money was her life savings; a large part of it came from the sale of two duplexes in 2008 that she had owned with her husband, who died of a heart attack in the late 1980s. The funds had all been put in a trust account of Gelber’s, the lawyer.
On Feb. 10, Gelber, acting on behalf of Obodzinski, went before a Superior Court judge in Montreal, asking to have Piela removed from her apartment and placed into a seniors’ residence in Côte- des- Neiges.
Court transcripts show that Gelber asked for permission to move forward even though Piela hadn’t been served the motion. He hadn’t wanted to disturb her, he said.
“She suffers from Alzheimer’s,” he repeated. “She’s in a pretty exceptional situation, given her age, her health.”
“It’s crazy,” he told the judge, “this situation.”
The order was given, and two days later, police officers showed up to move her. She says that when she screamed in protest, they put a blanket over her head and taped her mouth shut.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said in an interview.
They took her to a home on Isabella Ave. The owner of the residence would later tell police he had been ordered by Gelber, Obodzinski and Kerner to not allow Piela to use the phone or have visitors.
Piela only learned where she was when she saw the address on a garbage bin, she says. She had no other way to tell.
After being there for three days, Piela waited for the right moment, grabbed her walker and headed out the door. “I go down, down, down, down, down,” she explained. “I’m freezing, it’s cold. Hoping somebody would see me, save my life.”
She found a young woman in the street. The woman gave Piela the coat off her back and called police, telling them there was an elderly lady who appeared to be lost.
Piela told police she wanted to kill herself if she had to go back there, that she didn’t have her clothes, documents or purse there. That she wasn’t allowed access to a phone or visitors.
Police took Piela’s statement, but ultimately took her back to the residence, where they verified the court order. According to police reports, the officers noticed that the two people listed to call in case of emergency, Kerner and Obodzinski, were the same two who had been questioned after the recent incident at Piela’s apartment.
Two days later, a police officer who speaks Polish — the one who would end up in the photo on Piela’s wall — learned from another officer that Piela had tried to run away from the residence, saying she was suicidal, reports say.
The Polish- speaking officer had been the one to initially meet with Kerner, and was familiar with the file. She decided police should check in on Piela.
When they did, Piela was extremely anxious, and told them about the duplexes she had sold after her husband died, about the money in her bank accounts. She told them Obodzinski wasn’t her niece.
They took her out of the residence and placed her in a crisis centre.
Within hours, calls started coming into the police station, their reports say.
“You had no right to take her away,” they say Gelber said in a message he left, mentioning the court order.
“She was in a safe environment. Why did you take her away from there?” Obodzinski asked in another message.
Kerner emailed two days later: “Can you kindly confirm you received this email and tell me where Ms. Piela is and how we can go about having her sent back to the home? There is a court order in place to have her there.”
Police grew suspicious enough to open an investigation.