Anna Ayala, a finger, Wendy’s and alcoholic scheming
Could addiction be at the root of giving the finger to Wendy’s?
Top Story: Employees, shareholders and franchisees suffer financial abuse, costing millions. Was it precipitated by addiction?
When Anna Ayala, 39, first accused Wendy’s of serving her a finger in a bowl of chili, it didn’t dawn on too many that she might be giving Wendy’s the finger in a style only an addict could conjure up. As evidenced from the decline in sales at a number of Wendy’s restaurants in the San Jose area where the incident occurred, many people believed her tale. Judy Johnson, the addict who accused the Buckey family of heinous – and on their face, impossible – crimes against children at the McMartin pre-school in anhattan Beach, California in the late 1980s, at one point had 98% of Los Angeles County residents convinced that the charges were true. Ayala, too, was a good liar.
Fortunately, Wendy’s was able to quickly rule out the loss of a finger by an employee or subcontractor in their chili-making process. Too, the finger didn’t appear to have been cooked in chili. So, police turned to Ms. Ayala and uncovered a pattern of litigation over the past decade. After her daughter allegedly got sick eating at El Pollo Loco, she sued and purportedly received a $30,000 settlement. She also sued a former employer for sexual harassment and an auto dealer over a car. When authorities arrested her for larceny in the Wendy’s case, she was also charged with grand theft in an unrelated incident occurring in 2002 for allegedly selling an elderly woman a mobile home Ayala didn’t own.
While bringing a lawsuit doesn’t require alcohol or other drug addiction, the fact that, observably, most lawsuits include an addict on one side or the other greatly increases the odds of addiction in someone bringing multiple suits. It’s not dissimilar to tailgating: many non-addicts have tailgated on occasion, but because DUIs (most of whom are addicts) do so far more often, the odds of DUI in any one tailgater are about 50%. If we could test the hypothesis, similar probabilities might be found in those bringing lawsuits. This is particularly true for one involving a false accusation, which is an especially helpful clue to addiction (# 16 in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics).
When journalist Joe Vazquez (www2.cbs5.com) showed up by invitation to interview Ayala at her home, she said she didn’t want to discuss it. “Besides, she said she was taking medication for her headaches. But then she just kept talking.” She is reported to have ended almost every sentence with, “…and now I’m really angry.” Ayala claims her family was treated like “terrorists,” adding that her daughter Genesis, who was wearing a sling during the interview, was injured when police searched the house. In an eery similarity to Michael Jackson’s hyperbolic accusation that police strong-armed him when he was arrested, according to Ayala, officers “grabbed [Genesis] with such force…slammed her into the cement. Handcuffed us all as if we were dogs or animals or I don’t know what the hell.”
Shortly after Vazquez left, the Associated Press issued a report on Ayala’s history of litigation. Hoping to get her response to the story, he called her. She snapped, “Joe, who?! I didn’t meet anybody from CBS today!” When Joe reminded her he had just left her house, she remembered, but then said she was on medications again and didn’t want to talk.
As awful a person as Anna Ayala appears to be, we give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the medications she is using are doing a lot more than treating her headaches and that she uses them addictively, i.e., in doses far beyond the level prescribed. Such use may be responsible for behaviors that have caused countless others far worse pain, particularly financial, than that caused by a mere “headache.”
Runners-up for top story of the month: Another busy month. American Idol judge and pop singer Paula Abdul, accused of seducing contestant Corey Clark (creating a rather nasty conflict of interest), pleading no contest to a fender-bender hit-and-run that occurred in December (which she seems to have tried to cover up), most recently seen slurring her words on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” Twenty-two-year-old Las Vegas real estate investor and “Apprentice” contestant “I never lose in life” Christopher Shelton, labeled a “hothead” by Donald Trump, arrested for disorderly conduct after yelling and cursing in a hotel lobby when the hotel’s nightclub wouldn’t let him in without a cover charge. “American Pie” star Chris Klein, 26, arrested for DUI with a Blood Alcohol Level of .20 per cent (which requires the consumption of 12 shots of 80-proof liquor, two bottles of wine or two six-packs of beer in the space of three hours for a 200-pound person). Ex-Savage Grace guitarist and founding member Christian Logue, 43, charged with practicing medicine without a license at his Ventura Center for Healing in Tarzana, California while calling himself Dr. Richard Santee, who treated up to 20 patients per week for cancer and diabetes; police seized military-style weapons, thousands of rounds of high-powered rifle ammunition and hand grenades at his apartment, along with stolen and forged Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and bank cards. Jeffrey Doyle Robertson, father of a high school football player, previously barred from football games after “shoving and verbally abusing” coaches, who shot and wounded the team’s coach. The unnamed mother of the Michael Jackson accuser, on the witness stand sparring with defense attorney Thomas A. Mesereau Jr., repeatedly referring to Jackson aides Dieter Weisner and Ronald Konitzer as “the Germans,” claiming a J.C. Penney Co. guard who accused her of shoplifting knocked her down so hard she did “bellyflops” on her body and her breasts fell our of her bra, who she says then squeezed one of her nipples 10 to 25 times, trying to “humiliate me, just like he’s trying to do at this moment,” referring to Mesereau. (Hyperbole is a terrific clue to alcoholism.) Actress Jane Fonda, who hasn’t had a drink in 15 months (I long hypothesized that the best explanation for her vilification of U.S. soldiers and support for the North Vietnamese was alcoholism). Christopher Bernard, who pleaded guilty to murdering his sister and her two toddlers, whose drugs of choice were Oxycontin and cocaine, telling the courtroom, “I take full responsibility for my actions. If my mind was not polluted by drugs, today would be a different day.” Pat O’Brien, host of the TV celebrity news show “The Insider,” checking himself into rehab and graduating, sober; his publicist Ken Sunshine responded to reporters asking for confirmation of unusual sexual escapades that he would not “dignify this garbage with a comment.” (He should confirm it to help Pat remember what can happen when he drinks.) Actor Joaquin Phoenix, 30, brother of River Phoenix who died from his addiction in 1993, checking himself into rehab. Debralee Scott, who played Hotsy Totsy on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” dead from cirrhosis of the liver.
Under watch: Leaders of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association union at Calipatria State Prison in Imperial County, California, who hung a rat trap on a prison bulletin board in protest over a captain’s “ratting on” three employees for using excessive force on an inmate (the “code of silence” is alive and well). New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, publicly airing charges of fraud by former AIG CEO Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, not only before charges have been brought, but also before the investigation is even finished (reminiscent of alcoholic Senator Joe McCarthy’s false accusations in an era of McCarthyism). (By the way, any improper accounting would have inflated AIG’s reserves by all of 1-3%, which is often considered “de minimus,” or irrelevant, by accountants.) The brilliant yet “socially retarded” physics student William Cottrell, sentenced to eight years in prison for playing a part in the fire bombing of over 100 Hummers and SUVs in August 2003 in the West Covina, California area; he may have played codependent-dupe to the more likely addicts Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe, who authorities believe have fled the country. Cheryl Rogers suing Merck, blaming Vioxx for a fatal heart attack her husband suffered; Merck says the empty packages of Vioxx presented by Rogers at a deposition left the factory six months after her husband’s death and pointed out that the 96 pills that Rogers claims were given to her husband by the doctor as a “sample” far exceeds the amount physicians typically give away. (Merck is now combing patients’ histories for evidence that “unhealthy habits” and not the anti-inflammatory pills caused heart problems. And by the way, these anti-inflammatories were being studied for their role in cancer prevention; the studies have come to a halt because of recent reports linking the drugs to increased cardiovascular risk. This could become yet another classic example of hidden addiction changing the course of history.) Kristopher Schwoch, 23, who allegedly used star-studded photos of himself to lend legitimacy to his purported charity, the StarCare Foundation, to sell bogus tickets to various Hollywood events at $500 to $5,000 each, charged with five counts of felony burglary. Barry Billcliff, 26, and Timothy Crebase, 24, who were recently interviewed on ABC’s “Good Morning America” regarding their amazing luck in finding a cache of antique cash worth more than $100,000 in the back yard of Crebase’s house; arrested two days later for receiving stolen property and conspiracy, accused of having found the money in the rafters of someone else’s barn, the roof of which Crebase replaced a few weeks before. Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom, who wrote a column about a Michigan State University basketball game before it was played, providing details of two alums who are now pro-ball players sitting in the stands “in their MSU clothing, [rooting for] their alma mater;” the alums didn’t show up (Albom is known for his Jekyll-Hyde personality, venom and temper tantrums). Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton, seen drinking “heavily” after Ian Klaus put his humanitarian work ahead of his love life with her. (That she has been seen “obviously”drunk suggests the possibility of low tolerance, an indication of non-addictive, even if abusive drinking; however, if “heavily”means a .30 per cent Blood Alcohol Level, even most alcoholics would appear drunk.)
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts – which would explain the behaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, which has made these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism and consequential bad behaviors is simple: stop protecting the addict.