When the bank manager called Irene Loretto and told her that her 92-year-old friend Ruth Hughes, who suffered from dementia and lived in a Farmington assisted living facility, tried to cash $27,000 worth of checks and bought a $3,000 bedroom set, she knew something was amiss.
Loretto, who had been granted power of attorney for her friend, immediately called Farmington police because she knew Hughes would not have spent that much money.
There’s the East Hartford man with dementia who tried to board a bus while wandering the neighborhood after his live-in aide overdosed on heroin. And there’s the Cromwell woman who realized her aide had rented and furnished an apartment using her stolen checkbook.