The Olympic Swimmer Story

2003

And how my wife and I did our part to assist the swimmers

Written 2019* 1,264 Words

#133 By Howard Yasgar

In 2003, my wife and I were living in Miami.

In 1987, my company purchased a town house condominium at mile marker 87 on US 1.

It was called Executive Bay Club, and our unit was T6.

Going to the condo most every weekend was a wonderful experience, but there was one drawback.

We had to keep our boat at a l marina called Plantation Key Marina that was a couple of miles down the road from the condo.

We were allowed to bring our boat to the dock at the condo, but we couldn’t leave our boat there during the week.

When we heard rumors that the Marina was going to be sold, we realized that we needed to buy a house that was on a canal so we could have a place to keep our boat.

That’s when we started house hunting.

Eventually we purchased a home that was on a canal, and we decided that rather than sell our condo at Executive Bay, we would rent it out.

To rent it, we opted to use a local real estate agent to assist us.

One of the reasons we used a local rental agent was because they took over all the problems of advertising the unit, as well as qualifying any potential renters.

Having an agent would also assist any potential renter to fill out the condo association papers which were required.

All these things were supposed to be done for us by the real estate agent.

Our condo at Executive Bay was usually kept rented, for a year or two, at a time.

Whenever a tenant left, it gave us the opportunity to clean, paint and do whatever repairs were necessary.

In 2003 our condo at Executive Bay Club was empty, which gave us the opportunity to fix the place up.

We wanted to paint the interior and have the second-floor carpeting cleaned, and we also wanted to replace all the window treatments by installing new levelors.

Our condo had an older hot water heater and we decided to replace with a more modern “On Demand” hot water heater.

By removing the old water heater, it required me to repair some tile in a downstairs closet.

Once the tile work was done, we would have our real estate agent advertise the unit for rent again.

It was on a bright Sunday afternoon, when I loaded our car up with everything, I needed to do the tile work.

As we drove up to the front of our condo, there was a U-Haul trailer parked there, and the front door of our condo was open.

Neither my wife Katherine nor I had any idea of what was going on, we hadn’t authorized anyone to rent the unit.

We were standing there when a tall lanky black fellow with an Arabic accent came out of the front door.

I asked him what the hell was going on?

He said he was a U.S. Olympic swimmer and he was in the Keys to train for the upcoming Olympics.

While my wife and I are probably just as supportive of the Olympics as anyone, his answer didn’t sit well with us.

My wife immediately called the real estate agent and I went into the unit to repair the tile.

While I was there, the Olympic swimmer introduced me to his wife.

She appeared to be a blond American girl, and they had a blond baby daughter that looked to be perhaps 3 or 4 years old.

His wife said that they were from Alabama, but I must admit they looked and sounded strange to me.

It appears that our real estate agent had authorized these people to occupy our condo without our permission.

The agent told my wife not to worry as she had the rent and a deposit.

When we asked her if she had the condo associations permission, it appears she didn’t, but she would get it taken care of.

What she told us was that since our town “The Village of Islands in Islamorada” had an Olympic sized swimming pool in our park, the Olympic swimmers were given permission to use it for training at no cost.

However, no arrangements had ever been made to house the Olympic swimmers in the keys.

So, it appears our Arabic guy just loaded up a U-Haul trailer with his wife, and his kid, as well as some furniture, and headed to the Keys with no place to stay.

It seemed to us that everyone that was involved in this was so enthralled in trying to assist the Olympic swimmers, they bypassed all normal protocol.

They were Thinking they were in some way doing their part in assisting the United States Olympics, us too.

Four months passed with no problems

The front entranceway into our condo had a cement walkway, and one of the concrete squares in it was cracked by the roots of a nearby tree.

As it was dangerous to walk on, the association decided to replace the concrete square with new concrete.

By the time we stopped by to see it, the new concrete had already hardened.

Our Olympic swimmer had scraped in a very long message all in Arabic.

He had completely defaced the concrete walkway.

We could see that no one from the association was anxious to say anything to him about why he did it.

After eight months passed, Katherine noticed two rent checks had not appeared.

That’s when we drove over to the unit and found it was empty.

Well, it was not exactly empty, there was children’s furniture and trash everywhere.

The newly painted walls were all marked with a child’s scribbling and it was all done in wax crayons which is next to impossible to remove.

I couldn’t believe it, even the new Home Depot Levelors we had just bought had what looked like bullet holes in them.

I tried to figure out how they made round holes in the Levelors, but I couldn’t.

We found out that our swimmer and his family had lived there for two months without any water or electricity, and then they had left without saying anything to anyone.

When they left, they took with them the Executive Bay access cards.

My wife called the Olympic swimmer’s wife at their home in Alabama, and she asked her to please send us the rent that was due and the Executive Bay access cards.

My wife asked her, “As a parent, how could you allow your child to scribble and deface all the walls with crayon?”

Her reply to my wife was, “You are just being derogatory towards us”.

Eventually the manager at Executive Bay Club had all the Arabic writing on the walkway cemented over.

After all this, I can say, I think we have done more than our part to assist the U.S. Olympic swimming team.