http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,141 ... 67,00.html
Couple take lumps since cookie suit
By Electa Draper
Denver Post Staff Writer
Post / Shaun Stanley
For Renea and Herb Young, life has been anything but rosy since she successfully sued two Durango teenagers after a late-night cookie drop went sour. The couple have endured a barrage of ridicule and crank calls, with one caller telling them, “You are what’s wrong with society.”
Durango - Herb Young turned the telephone off again Tuesday after it rang at 12:40 a.m.
One recent caller had told him that "you should be found dead in a ditch."
Nine out of 10 calls to his house are from "crackpots," he said, ever since a plate of cookies and a case in La Plata County Small Claims Court turned life upside down.
Since his wife, 49-year-old Wanita "Renea" Young, successfully sued two 18-year-old girls for scaring her with a late-night knock on the back door and a then-anonymous cookie drop on the porch, she and Herb have spent the last two weeks trying to defend themselves. A barrage of crank calls and hate mail and truckloads of strange packages have been aimed at their rural home just south of Durango.
Almost everyone but the magistrate has taken the girls' side in the court conflict over about $900, part of the medical bill for Renea Young's anxiety attack. The case made headlines around the world.
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"Last week the calls were all day, every day, and all night," Herb Young said. "It's slowing down."
He estimated that one-third of the calls to his home have been from the area, but two-thirds are from all over the country.
Many strangers have made their own cookie deliveries to the Youngs, everything from elaborately wrapped and expensively stocked gift baskets to an envelope holding Oreo crumbs.
Nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Michael Gallagher sent 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to U.S. troops abroad in honor of the "Colorado Cookie Caper" and the two girls who were sued, Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zilletti.
On Tuesday, the Youngs' rural mail carrier told Herb Young that she had two small truckfuls of packages for him, but they appeared to be empty boxes.
"Send them back," he said he told her. He wasn't sure how to interpret empty boxes.
"Some people have been almost pleasant and said they were just calling 'to voice my opinion,"' he said. "The flip side is that I've heard every profanity you can imagine. And people threatening to cut me up or beat me up or my wife."
One caller told the Youngs that "you are what's wrong with society."
"All this over cookies," Renea Young said.
She is so devastated, she said, that she hasn't been back to her part-time job as a Wal-Mart cashier.
"Our home is like a funeral parlor," Renea Young said. "They've robbed us of our laughter. My spirit, my soul, is damaged."
She questions whether she can continue as president of the board and director of the Durango Food Bank, a volunteer position she has held for 16 years. The charity, where co-workers say Young is a dedicated and capable leader, gives away 8,000 pounds of food a month to families in need.
"The food bank has been my passion. It would be a real loss to me," Young said. "But I wouldn't want to bring any harm to it."
She said the deluge of criticism has been hard on their 19-year-old daughter, a friend of Taylor Ostergaard's.
Herb Young says his once-bubbly daughter is now frequently in tears.
"I love Taylor," Renea Young says. "She's a super girl. She's been in my house many times. I don't know Lindsey, but I'm sure she's nice too. I never believed the girls meant any harm. It was just a prank."
In spite of this, she said, she sued for good reasons that she doesn't think have been spelled out in the media.
On July 31, between about 9:15 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., eight scattered rural families received surprise plates of homemade cookies with paper hearts that said, "Have a great night, the T and L Club." The Youngs' delivery was just after 10:30 p.m.
Renea Young was alone in her isolated country home with her daughter and ailing elderly mother. Her husband was out of town.
The girls pounded loudly on the back door and didn't answer when Renea Young called out, "Who's there?" Young said she could see only shadowy figures that ran away to a car parked outside the gate.
She was so frightened, she had an anxiety attack but thought it might be a heart attack, she said. When a sheriff's deputy came to the house, he found the cookies and concluded that no crime had been committed. But Young said she still felt ill the next day and went to the hospital.
Young soon figured out who had left the cookies and complained to Taylor's mother, Jill Ostergaard. She said Ostergaard and Lindsey's mother, Martha, offered, "even insisted" on paying almost $900 in medical bills not covered by insurance. But the months dragged on, and the families never sent the money.
"I really tried to settle this out of court four different times," Young says. "I'm not sure where it all went bad."
The Ostergaard and Zilletti families said they first waited to see a bill. Then they asked Young to sign an agreement that, with the roughly $900 paid, she would not make additional claims. Young said she was bothered by that request and the lack of trust she believed it signaled. By Dec. 30, she said, she felt that she had to go to court.
Whether the girls meant harm or not, Young told The Post, they had been responsible for frightening her family and sending her to the emergency room. She offered this analogy:
"I backed into a car in a parking lot. I didn't mean to. But I caused damage, and I had to pay for it."
Young said that if she had it to do over again, she still believes going to court was the right thing to do.
"I don't know how to change. I don't know how to compromise my principles," she said.
The Youngs' recent attempts to tell their side on radio talk shows or national television have been disasters, the couple said. The two girls they sued have been overwhelmed by messages of support. But the Youngs said they have been attacked in interviews.
The Ostergaard and Zilletti families have said they feel bad that the Youngs have been harassed.
"We hope people will stop," Jill Ostergaard said.
Taylor's father, Dick Ostergaard, was scheduled to appear in court today over a restraining order he filed Feb. 4 against Herb Young for allegedly making harassing calls to the Ostergaard home.
Then, the families hope, the cookie war will be over.
- No direct linking to this kind of sites!~Olrik