Well, I seen this office take over and ruin a senior's life personally. Granted her caregiver was taking advantage of her finances and they were initially appointed to handle her financial affairs.
Then they realised she had a very healthy pension, her and her spouse's (no children), also she has very valuable real estate. She begged me to intervene when they began to say she was mentally incompetent. Her only disability was hard of hearing and speaking four languages. At 87 the State themselves reissued her driver's license and she took the driving exam.
But the Public Guardian's office decided otherwise, even after five doctors disagreed with them. She cried to me, she was so very bright, alert and active. She cried she left Germany 50 years before because of the gestapo. She feared the way things started going they would whisk her off in the dead of night just like the gestapo.
At first they had homecare worker's coming to her house. Then she all of a sudden developed Abdominal cancer and because of her hysterics over abuse and theft from these homecare worker's, yes one good one from Poland was willing to testify to this woman's sanity and good health, but they fired her.
In the interim I plead her case to a very powerful alderman, a Daley schill to no avail. I got a lawyer involved whose mother happened to come from the very same village in Germany. He was the only lawyer willing to fight the Public Guardian, no one would. Several lawyers said they play too dirty and are unbeatable.
I was allowed no contact with her, being I was not family. And was marked as an instigator with the PG's office. I was threatened with arrest because one night she herself called the police on a careworker's (live-in by then) abuse. At 3AM she came crying to me and I held her poor shaking body.
I saw this lady who fled for freedom and her and her husband worked 40 years paying taxes in this country, go from a vibrant woman with more energy and nohow than I could ever have. I saw her reduced to a nervous wreck created by the PG's people who couldn't sleep.
Well, she was right John, they did come and steal her in the middle of the night, the Cook County Public Guardian reduced her to just a name on the mailbox.