It was late in the high desert city of Alamogordo, New Mexico, and Dawn Farkas was out of gas.
She had run her tank almost dry rushing to a hospital emergency room for what turned out to be a panic attack. Farkas, almost 60 years old and suffering from injuries caused by a faulty medical device, climbed into her car in the hospital parking lot, pulled some coats over herself and tried to sleep.
“Someone saw me,” she said in a recent interview, her voice giving way to sobs. “They gave me some gas money and some vouchers for food in the cafeteria, and advised me not to stay very long because I might get picked up for vagrancy.”
Though Farkas was destitute in January 2018, she was in fact owed a substantial sum of money. She had inked a settlement deal over that faulty medical device, but the settlement would take over a year to actually pay out. Read full article>>