By now our lives were a complete mess and I was living day to day wondering what to do. Craig forced me to go with him to his attorney and “confess to lying” about the broken window on my car incident. I went with him to his attorney, and then completely fumbled and couldn’t figure out how to lie about the truth and the attorney WAS AWESOME! He knew EXACTLY what was going on and even though he was Craig's attorney, he gave me the benefit of the doubt and led Craig to believe I had done what he wanted me to do. He knew I was being forced to be there against my will that day, and knew that Craig had indeed smashed my car window out of rage when I tried to drive away from him.
Another person I have to thank is my landlord for rmy coffee shop at the time. He owned Ruth's Diner, up Parleys Canyon, and a lot of other hotels in Layton and Salt Lake. He gave me free rooms anytime I needed them. He could tell Craig was on a rampage and my landlord put some code into all his hotels that would grant me a free room whenever I showed up. I can’t thank him enough because that alone gave me a safe place to be on nights I knew it wasn’t safe to go home.
One night while I had a protective order in place, Craig had come at me like a raging bull about something, so I called 911 and they arrested him. I still didn’t feel safe going home so I went and checked into the local hotel close by to get some rest. At around 10:30pm I received a phone call from a dispatcher saying that Craig had been released. The Bishop in our ward had paid his bail and Craig was free. I couldn’t believe it. I just could not believe it. I don't think I slept one wink that night.
The next morning I got up and opened the curtains, my room overlooked the parking lot, and there, parked right next to my car, was Craig's car. He had figured out where I was, and he was mad that I had got him arrested. I sat in that hotel room waiting for him to leave. He called me over and over and over on my cell phone. Finally I hooked up the little tape recorder that the police had given me, and I answered his call. Those phone calls got him arrested again later that day.
Our protective order allowed us phone calls to discuss the children, pick up and drop off, and any legal business due to the shop closing down. Craig could not keep to those restrictions. He was always angry, yelling and very threatening. Placing a protective order on Craig made my life much worse, and in my opinion, much more dangerous. You will see this in in the journal entries I am going to be putting up here over the next few posts.
The Victim's Advocates had told me to keep a backpack in the trunk of my car with immediate supplies and a change of clothes for the days that I didn’t feel safe to go home. That was a HUGE help. I could check into a hotel with my backpack of supplies and would have what I needed.
One day during one of our arguments, I realized that Craig knew far too much about my day to day life. I realized he knew who I was talking to and in contact with, which meant he had access to my cell phone records. I went into my local Sprint office and they told me that Craig had come in and demanded a copy of my phone records. Now I had previously told them that NO ONE was allowed to get those records. I had a password on there that I will tell you all now because obviously it has changed, but my password was MY PERSONAL. This was because Craig would often come up with a reason for me to call Sprint and because of the password protection on the account they would ask me for it. I didn’t want Craig to know my password, so by using MY PERSONAL, I had hoped that to Craig it would sound like they were asking me if it was my business or personal account. To this day I think that was smart because it really did sound like I was answering a simple question when I was actually giving my password. Anyway, apparently one day Craig went into Sprint, and demanded that he get copies of all my records. The idiot working there told Craig he was not allowed to disclose that information but told Craig he could stand behind his desk and look at the info over his shoulder on his screen. I wish I had the energy, money and power to sue all the people that helped Craig destroy my life.
Then my business bank account. I had a business bank account at Barclays Bank in Kaysville. My name was the only name on the business account. One day I went to pay out payroll and discovered I had a ZERO balance in my account. My blood went cold, my blood pressure went high. I knew EXACTLY what had happened. They were literally across the street from my coffee shop, so I walked over there and calmly asked where all my money was. They looked at the records, called the manager over and said that Craig had come in that morning and withdrawn the entire balance. I calmly asked if Craig was a “signatore” on my account (spell check doesn’t like that word, but it means having signing power on a bank account). Knowing full well he did not have any power on my account. They confirmed he was not on the account. The manager said he had been the one to actually give Craig the funds because he “seemed like such a nice, honest guy”. I told them to immediately put those funds back into my account. I withdrew every dime and closed the account, and told the manager he had better pray that I don’t sue him and the bank.
My landlord, as I have mentioned, was an incredible man. He had figured out what was going on and he could see the battle I was fighting. He came to me and made me an offer. He would let me out of the 5 year lease I had signed, and in return I could give him some of my commercial equipment. As I mentioned, he owned a few restaurants and hotels, so commercial equipment was worth something to him. He got my stand up double door freezer, fridge, soft serve ice cream maker, my awesome espresso machines and grinders and a lot of other equipment that was all worth thousands of dollars. This was a very difficult decision to make because not only did I LOVE my cafe, I knew that my son Wil, and my Aunt and Uncle, and mother in law, all had put so much unpaid work into it. It had huge potential. We made home made South African foods, incredible coffee and our service was perfect. It was a huge chapter in our lives that I did not want to close at all.
Now one of the things we had also included in the business was a coffee trailer. This was a drive through coffee trailer that was 100% self sufficient with generators, good water, old water containers, fridges and freezers. We built this trailor from scratch. I have photographs of this trailer as we worked on it and built it, but of course they are literal paper photos and I need to get them scanned into here. BUT WILL DO IT!!
We set this trailer up outside the IRS building in Ogden and it did very well. So even after I closed the Kaysville location, we still had the trailer running. Craig would run it most of the time as by now I was a Realtor, but when he couldn't be there, I was. There is a whole episode on what happened with this trailer, but I have that all in journal entries coming out soon.
That's it for tonight. Thank you all for following along, we are close to 11,000 views!!
Thanks again for all your support, until next time, Keep love in your hearts!!
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