Back in February, I wrote about getting stalked by a guy I did HBO with. You can read that article here.
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After I wrote that article, I started getting hang-up phone calls. The calls were coming up as anonymous on my caller ID. The one night, he called 9 times in a matter of 5 minutes. I knew I could block anonymous calls so I logged onto my account to block any anonymous calls from getting thru.
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I called Comcast to see what I could do. I was told that I would have to agree to press charges and they would only give the information to the police. I don’t have a problem pressing charges because I know that is the only way to get him to stop. I also needed to know for sure who it was. I then called the police where I live to find out what I needed to do. I spoke with the police chief and he asked me if I had any idea who it could be and I did. I gave him HBO guy’s name and he asked some questions about how I knew him.
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Sometimes I do get legitimate anonymous calls so I hated to block them. If you have ever had a doctor call you from home in the evening, you know that they block their home number from showing up (can’t say I blame them!). I was told to use *57 and that will trace the number. I unblocked anonymous calls from getting thru and waited.
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I put a little sticker on both phones with the *57 so I would not have to even think about what number I needed to dial to do the trace. At 2:45 AM on March 17th, the phone rang and woke me up. I hung up and dialed *57 and there was a recording that the call was successfully traced. The recording said to contact your local police department for the next steps.
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I have been tracing calls since March 17th. I started blocking anonymous calls over night and unblocking them during the day. One evening, I traced 9 phone calls and I did not even trace every call that came in. After they would call, I would block them until the next day. This has been going on for almost three weeks now. The calls that were not getting thru because of the blocks still show up on the call logs as missed calls – they were marked private and coming in at all hours of the night. I have talked to the police chief several times and he has been waiting on Comcast. One time the police chief called because Comcast needed some information that he did not have. He also told me he had played phone tag a couple times with the guy at Comcast and the Comcast guy was out sick one day when he called him back.
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Needless to say, I was starting to get a little frustrated with how long this was taking. Last night, I found a spot on the Comcast website to email the head of customer care. I decided to do that. I also sent a link from the page that says part of their customer satisfaction is to quickly resolve stuff. This morning, I received an email with the phone number for their legal department. I actually called that number last week but you have to leave a message and no one called me back. I emailed the person back and said I called that number and they did not return my phone call.
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At 10:00 AM this morning, I had a phone call from the legal department at Comcast. He said that they had no record of talking to the police chief – I knew that was not true. I figured the paperwork was probably sitting on someone’s desk. I gave him the police chief’s name and phone number. At 10:24 AM, the police chief called – he had the fax from Comcast and all the calls were coming from the same number.
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He did not have a name and was going to get that but asked if I recognized the number. The area code was 812 and I thought that was Indiana, where the HBO guy lives. I looked up the number I had blocked for him and the numbers matched – big surprise! Now I will be able to press charges and get a restraining order against him. Because he lives in a different state, it is actually a federal crime.
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Last Tuesday, I had an appointment in Pittsburgh with a doctor that knows this guy so I brought up what was going on. I also told Dr. A about the message I received thru my blog supposedly from Dr. C at the wound center. The nurse that was in the room with Dr. A last week used to be Dr. C’s nurse and her mouth dropped – she apparently thought that I thought it was Dr. C doing the calling. I told her I was sure that it was W, not Dr. C. Dr. A said that it was a shame because W used to have a good job and then got into drugs.
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Recently I found out that W had stolen a prescription pad from the wound center and forged one of the doctor’s names to get pain pills. That was something W never told me. W did tell me once that Dr. A gave him a prescription for pain pills and then came outside to take it back – he did not tell me why Dr. A did that. I thought that he had a problem with pain pills but never suspected that he would forge a doctor’s name to get them.
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After I talked to the police chief this morning, I called Dr. A’s office and talked to his receptionist and asked her to let Dr. A know that it did turn out to be W. She said he needs to get a life. I laughed and said that is exactly what Dr. A said.
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Last night I was talking to my sister about this and she said why would someone be so stupid to not realize the calls can be traced in this day and age. He obviously has some serious problems. He was calling at all times of the night when he knows I have health problems. The times he did get thru, he kept calling back as soon as I would hang up. Like I said, I traced 9 calls the one evening and did not even trace every one. Another evening, he called 9 times in 5 minutes before I could get the block turned on. If that is not harassment, I don’t know what is!
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The police now know who it is and can proceed from there. The police chief told me that he had two meetings today but he would definitely get back to me. I am breathing a huge sigh of relief today!
Gosh that is scary and stressful to say the least… I hope this guy gets in trouble. Dumb guy… sounds like a kid making prank phone calls. But he is a Adult and does need to fess up and be punished for his wrongs. he seems to be making a bad path with sealing and this. So stop him before he does a dummer thing. I hope you find some relaxation just knowing the police are involved. Take care, Debbie
Thanks Debbie - he is acting like a kid. I do feel a lot better knowing the police are involved.The police chief said “we take care of our people” when I talked to him today.
I’m not too far from Indiana and we know he’s a gimp. Perhaps he likes to catch golf balls?
We could put him to the test and find out if he likes golf balls!