Posted on 02/05/2005 10:24:01 AM PST by Pikamax
After a crumby ending, donated dough rolls in for 2 cookie deliverers By Electa Draper Denver Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 06, 2005 -
Durango - The Cookie Defense Fund has swelled to thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of Denver Post readers e-mailed and called to express "shock" and "outrage" that two 18-year-old Durango girls were sued for something they did last summer: drop off a plate of cookies and a paper heart on a neighbor's porch.
Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zellitti lost in Small Claims Court in La Plata County on Thursday. Their impulse to bake cookies and treat neighbors by knocking, dropping off and running away went awry. One of nine neighbors who received a plate of cookies said the pounding on her door about 10:30 p.m. July 31 frightened her into an anxiety attack. A Durango judge awarded about $900 to the 49-year-old woman to cover some medical bills incurred when she ended up at the emergency room the next day.
If the people who called and wrote make good on their pledges, that $900 will be recovered many times over. Several people offered to personally cover the whole amount themselves.
The attention has been overwhelming.
"We just put them on the plane. Lindsey, Taylor and Jill (Taylor's mother) are headed to New York to do 'Good Morning America,"' Martha Zellitti, Lindsey's mom, said Friday night.
"They just thought it might be their one shot to tell the country they're still not afraid to do good deeds," Martha Zellitti said. "They'll just try to be more considerate in the future about the time."
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The families are also mulling over an offer from Jay Leno to do "The Tonight Show." It's not looking good for Leno, though, because Lindsey's mom wants her to get back to college in Kansas, where she is a freshman studying animal nutrition. Taylor is still in high school.
"We're just not the movie- star types," Martha Zellitti said.
But the story, which appeared Friday in The Denver Post, was linked to the Drudge Report and eBay. The tale was recounted on MSNBC ("Sugar and spice is not always nice," journalist Dan Abrams said) and other media.
The Otis Spunkmeyer cookie- making company is offering to hold an event in Durango to set things right.
"Cookies are the ultimate comfort food," Otis Spunkmeyer spokeswoman Liz Rayo said. "We don't want anyone sued over cookies. Cookies are good. This is an emotional issue for us."
They're not the only ones.
In e-mail after e-mail to The Post, from Hawaii to New York, and from Canada to Puerto Rico, people invoked with dismay the adage "No good deed goes unpunished."
Many observed that the unfortunate misunderstanding gave new meaning to the term "Cookie Monster."
One reader called the plaintiff in the case "a macaroon." Another called her a "cookie batterer."
The plaintiff could not be reached for comment Friday.
Martha Zellitti said the girls' families are not upset with the neighbor, or with the judge, who received many calls from people questioning his decision. Zellitti said the neighbor volunteers at the local food bank and does good deeds herself.
"And the judge made the best decision he could with the information he had," Zellitti said. "We just weren't prepared."
The judge awarded only $1 for damages, even though he could have given the plaintiff lost wages and the cost of new motion- sensor lights for her porch and more. She had itemized about $3,000 in all.
But political conservatives who read the story were convinced the judge must be a liberal activist intent on being politically correct. On the other hand, liberals said the judge and neighbor must be conservatives, who tend to see "terrorists behind every bush and on every porch," even in a quiet rural neighborhood just south of Durango.
The girls' defenders ran the gamut from executives and reverends to felons.
One e-mailer offered to set the girls up in their own cookie business.
There were other factions. A small but intense group were incensed that anyone would consider 10:30 p.m. "too late." It's really early, they said.
One church group wrote that members were very concerned because one of its favorite programs is for youths to ring doorbells, drop off treats and run. Another church group in South Carolina said it had young men in its congregation who would like to correspond with the Durango bakers.
"Lindsey's boyfriend wouldn't like that," Martha Zellitti said.
No one was asleep.
10:30 is a little late, but so what?
Any normal person would have been satisfied with a "sorry the girls left them so late"
Ms. Young is obviously a bitch and a money grubbing crank She should treated to as much scorn as society can inflict on her.
...and I forgot to mention that the girls only went to houses that were lit. I suppose that may make a difference to some.
Well, on a thread yesterday I took into consideration the time this happened and some other aspects of their story and pronounced myself disbelievig of their tale and have been hounded ever since.
Such is life.
Lmaorotf
And cooking never goes out of style! I well remember back when my mom was teaching my younger sister and me how to make fudge. Well, the first few times, it was either too hard to cut so we had to use something hard to break it up or it was so soupy we had to eat it with a spoon. But you know what, we did learn to make fudge that was edible. My good ole days.
QUOTE: One church group wrote that members were very concerned because one of its favorite programs is for youths to ring doorbells, drop off treats and run.
I'll stand corrected on the fact that this statement appears to have been made by a third-party church group. Nevertheless, I stand by my original statement: church leaders have an obligation to instill morals and manners in their clergy. So if these two girls are members of a church, they should have been counseled by their church's leadership.
Many of us disagree with your opinions.
So please, tell us: at what time do YOU think it's too late to be banging on neighbor's doors for no good reason?
(Sigh) How I long for the days when society taught and practiced good manners, common decency, and personal responsibility!
We live in a culture that encourages and rewards fear.
AAAGGGHHHH !!!!!!!
....Cripes!
Don't EVER do that to me again!
I'd marry one of them.
Hmmm, as a resident of Colorado, we have the infamous 'make my day' law. We have had someone killed for banging on a screendoor in the middle of the night.
I firmly feel that the intentions were good, the neighbor is a witch, but the girls should have been reprimanded and forced to pay any associated costs (except for the medical bills).
More than that though, many people feel 10:30 is very late (i.e the rule of never calling past 9:00). In Colorado, it can get you shot so the girls should at least learn a lesson from what they did.
If you bang on my door in rural Colorado at 10:30 at night and then run, I would have called the sheriff as well. I wouldn't have sued or reacted as ugly as this lady but it is way outside the bounds of normal. Good intentions, poor choice of application.
We are armed to the teeth as well so it is just a very unwise thing to do.
I totally agree!!!!!!! It is also family friendly FUN.
I wasn't around yesterday, and so this is the first thread I've seen on the matter.
Such is life!
I don't disagree with you at all.
I don't have a dog in your fight but this is close to abusive...Not welcome on FR.
First of all I question this woman's previous "assault" incident... to someone like her, just walking up and saying hello could be construed as an "assault".. Secondly, if she was so shaken up, why didn't she call the police, and why did she wait til the next day to go to the hospital?? Lastly, whether or not 10:30 was too late to be knocking on doors, the lady didn't have to take this to court after apologies were made and reparations offered. Believe me, I know this type of neighbor, even if the girls had come earlier and spoken to her personally, she'd find something to sue someone over sometime...
No, what I get in my FR mailbox from time to time is "abusive". My post was merely an attempt to end this nonsense once and for all. It has gone on long enough.
APf
Let the record show that contrary to the implication you meant to convey, your mailbox has not received a missive from me.
Now you'll deny that was your intent but I just wanted to make that clear.
And contrary to the implication you meant to convey that I called you pathetic out of the clear blue sky, I did so after having numerous posts from you to me in the same veiin as the one above. A mild but accurate assessment.
The article says she did call the sheriff and they advised her to leave her home that night.
Note, this narrow factual point should not be construed that I therefore support her decision to proceed with a lawsuit. I feel a disclaimer is in order as those discussing the issue seem to be emotionally invested in their stance and prone to making leaps of logic from point a to point z.
I just noticed that the cookie auction on Ebay was pulled.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4355570642
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