Help Available For Elder Victims

Has anyone at home ever hurt you?

Does anyone scold or threaten you, pressure you to sign documents you don’t understand, take what’s yours without asking, or touch you without your consent?

Lately questions like these come right along with a free lunch at senior centers throughout Spokane.

The questions are printed on placemats that go on the tables when meals are served. The same placemats also are delivered along with “Meals on Wheels” to the homes of shut-ins.

“If you answered yes to any of these questions,” the placemats urge, “please call for help.” The numbers to call are:

Adult Protective Services - 323-9400.

Spokane Community Mental Health - 838-4428.

Police - 911.

Spokane Prosecutor’s Office - 477-3662, ext. 286.

“We put out 15,000 placemats in our first printing,” says Barbara Tillman, special advocate in the office of the prosecutor for elder crime victims. “Response has been excellent.”

Tillman has been working as an elder victim specialist in Spokane part time for a year. The U.S. Justice Department has just awarded Spokane a $150,000 grant to establish a special office charged solely with prosecuting crimes against older victims.

“This is so new,” says Mark Laiminger, community affairs manager for the prosecutor’s office, “that I have only phone confirmation of the grant and am still awaiting the paperwork.” The new office to expected to be open in about a month.

It’s estimated that up to 40 percent of America snores.

Older people in particular are prone to problems that range from mere annoyances to life-threatening sleep apnea in which breathing repeatedly stops due to blockage of the airway.

Now a new method offers relief for many.

It is a minimally invasive, practically painless procedure called somnoplasty, which is performed under local anesthesia on an outpatient basis at little cost.

Somnoplasty employs low-power radio waves to reduce and stiffen floppy tissue in the upper airways that tends to sag and get in the way of breathing as we age. Tissue treated with somnoplasty typically shrinks over a period of a month or two.

Meantime, patients generally are in and out of the hospital in under an hour and able to go right back to work.

Somnoplasty is available in Boise, Billings, Mont., Tri-Cities, Olympia, Seattle and all over the West Coast, as well as most of the nation. But it is not available in Spokane.

For those who wish to know more about this revolutionary new treatment, information is available on the Internet at www.somnus.com, or phone Somnus Medical Technologies in San Jose, Calif., at (408) 773-9121.

The younger generation has a much earlier start on saving for retirement than the older generation did, according to a new study.

A survey commissioned by Money Magazine and Lincoln Financial Group found that 64 percent of Americans 18 to 34 are saving for retirement. The average age when they start is 23. That’s 13 years earlier than people 65 and older. It’s four years earlier than baby boomers.