The HOA treasurer had one more question, standing there with his laptop open to the association bank account. He wanted to know why the landscaping crews payment, the crew that ripped out my roses, had gone to an LLC with a Scottsdale address.
He had already read my sticky note to the room. Sharon Pike, the HOA president who fined me fifty dollars a day and sent a crew to dig up forty-two rose bushes while I was at church, was not on the deed of the house she lived in. The county record showed her sister owned it, in Scottsdale. Sharon had been renting for six years, which under the bylaws meant she was never eligible to serve on the board. Not for one day. Every fine she signed was invalid. Every vote she cast was void.
Now the treasurer followed the money, and the money told the rest of it.
The landscaping company that destroyed my memorial garden was owned by Sharons own sister, the same sister who owned the house Sharon lived in, and the HOA had been paying family all along.
Sharon had not just overstepped. She had been running the association like a faucet into her own familys pockets. The beautification project she bragged about, the crews she hired, the vendors she chose, over and over the checks went to a Scottsdale LLC that turned out to be her sisters, and Sharon took a cut for steering the work.
My roses were just the part that showed. Forty-two of them, one for every year Frank and I were married. Frank was a Navy man, thirty years, and he loved roses more than anything except me. His favorite was a red Mister Lincoln by the bedroom window, and every morning I opened the blinds and said good morning to him.
Sharon sent me a letter calling them unapproved landscaping. When I brought lemon bars to talk, she said she did not care about my dead husband, she cared about property values, and she shut the door. Then one Sunday I came home from First Baptist to dirt on my sidewalk and holes along my house and Franks Mister Lincoln lying in a pile by the curb.
My neighbor Betty said rules are rules, Irene, you should have filled out the form. I did not argue. I picked up the Mister Lincoln and replanted it in a pot on my patio. Then I called the Maricopa County Recorder and asked one simple question, how do I look up who owns a house, and I wrote one address on a sticky note and put it on my fridge.
A board member has to own a lot in the association. That is in the bylaws and it is plain as day. A woman who rents her house from her sister cannot sit on the board, cannot levy a fine, cannot send a crew with shovels. The retired judge from the third cul-de-sac stood up and said that under Arizona law the association owed me for the plants and the damage.
And the self-dealing, the HOA money flowing to the presidents own family through a Scottsdale LLC, was the part that brought the whole thing down. That is not a technicality. That is exactly the kind of thing an association has to report, and an outside accountant was reviewing the books by the next week.
Sharon grabbed her purse. Every fine against my roses was voided, the liens erased, and I was paid back for forty-two bushes and the damage to my yard. Sharon faced the consequences of serving on a board she was never eligible for and steering its money to her family, not my anger, the associations lawyers and the law.
I replanted the garden. Forty-two roses again, one for every year, and a few extra, because Frank would have liked the fullness of it. Franks Mister Lincoln survived the pot and went back by the bedroom window, where I still open the blinds for him every morning.
Sharon said she cared about property values, not my dead husband. It turned out she cared most about her sisters LLC. I cared about forty-two roses and a Navy man who loved them, and a sticky note from the county recorder turned out to be worth more than all her rules.