HUNLEY: Ignorant thoughts from the uninformed are a pain

Another example that no good deed goes unpunished:

Ashley Pollard, who was on the front page of this newspaper Thursday, said she brought her story of a Craigslist scam to the media because she didn’t want anyone else to be victimized.

But instead of thanks, she received intense scrutiny. Someone even found her Facebook page, she told me, took information from it out of context and then posted a nasty comment on this newspaper’s site, insidenova.com.

Like many folks, Pollard and her husband, Kevin, are trying to short-sell their home.

Payments on the Lake Jackson property were manageable when the economy was fine and before their 4½-month-old son came into the world.
Now, times are tight. Both adult Pollards, who are in their 20s, work full-time and part-time jobs to try to make ends meet.

So Ashley Pollard went to Craigslist to try to find a new place for the family. And she found one that was suitable all right: It was her house.
A con artist had put an ad on the Web site marketing the Pollards’ abode for rent for $800 a month.

Ashley Pollard reported the scam to county police. But, before she did, she e-mailed the individual who had posted the shady ad.

He said she could move in right away — as long as she sent an $800 deposit to Nigeria, where he and his wife went as missionaries before falling “in love with it so much that they decided to stay,” Pollard told my colleague, Uriah A. Kiser.

As of Friday evening, nothing more had happened with the case.

But a handful of people have questioned how Pollard has spent her money.

A picture of her online and on the front of the paper shows Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and a Coach purse.

And “mama08,” who looked up Pollard’s Facebook page, noted that the scam victim drives an Acura and wrote online about jewelry and daydreams of buying a new truck.

But Pollard rightly points out that the recession hit some folks quickly.

When she made those purchases, she and her husband had more money and no bambino.

“You can make 300,000 [dollars] a year and still not afford a child,” she told me.

Indeed, without health insurance, the family has had to fork out about $12,000 in medical costs for momma and baby over the past few months.

And she was right again when she told me that her financial health and choices are irrelevant.

What she was trying to communicate was the scam, not the status of her mortgage.

“This is not something we’re proud of, or we’re happy about,” she said.

Pollard said she was brought almost to tears by the hurtful comments of people who have never met her, who don’t know her situation.

The criticism shouldn’t hurt her feelings, she said, but it does.

Really, though, ignorant thoughts from the uninformed don’t prove that Pollard spends unwisely. They prove only that it’s easy to throw stones from behind a computer and a made-up name.

Still, it would be hard to blame her if she did cry. And it also would be hard to blame her if she wished for those people’s houses to show up on Craigslist, too.