Speaker 1: At Southern Illinois University in the small city of Carbondale.
Speaker 1: Three light brown towers our campus landmarks their high rise dorms.
Speaker 1: A sophomore named Emily has moved into one of them.
Speaker 1: I lived actually on the fifteenth floor, and the view
Speaker 1: from up inside the towers that high up was just amazing.
Speaker 1: I just always loved it, and of course at night
Speaker 1: you could see all the lights from the city. It's
Speaker 1: the fall of two thousand three. Emily is not her
Speaker 1: real name, which she didn't want used. Emily and her
Speaker 1: roommate share a bathroom with two freshmen. The four girls
Speaker 1: are sweet mates, and as the semester goes on, they
Speaker 1: get to know each other. One of the freshman sweet
Speaker 1: mates is named Sarah, Sarah Delashman. She's from Highland, a
Speaker 1: small town almost two hours north. She's here as a
Speaker 1: pre med student. Sarah has short brown hair. It was
Speaker 1: kind of dirty blonde or close to brown, and it
Speaker 1: kind of looked a little bit feathered. She had glasses embraces.
Speaker 1: If she owned makeup, I didn't know it because I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever saw her wear makeup before at all.
Speaker 1: My previous two sweet mates the year before they were
Speaker 1: nowhere nearest, friendly, and so Sarah kind of seemed a
Speaker 1: little bit like a beam of sunshine. I guess you
Speaker 1: could say Sarah doesn't talk about her family all that much.
Speaker 1: I never saw it her dad. I think her dad
Speaker 1: was not in a picture, and I don't remember if
Speaker 1: he had passed away or it was, you know, like
Speaker 1: a divorce situation. I never saw her mom ever, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting because she lived about maybe an
Speaker 1: hour and a half, maybe closer to two hours. Her
Speaker 1: cousin had brought her newborn baby, and that's the only
Speaker 1: time I think that I remember she had any family
Speaker 1: that came and visited him. Not long into the semester,
Speaker 1: Sarah walks into Emily's room. I think it was about
Speaker 1: maybe October or so when she came and told us that,
Speaker 1: you know, that she had leukemia. Leukemia. No one takes
Speaker 1: the news of Sarah's cancer harder than her roommate, the
Speaker 1: other freshman of the bunch. She was one of those
Speaker 1: friends that if you were crossing the street and she
Speaker 1: saw that the bus was about to hit you, she
Speaker 1: would have jumped in the way to save her friend.
Speaker 1: She was going to support her no matter what she
Speaker 1: was That close with Sarah. The semester goes on. They
Speaker 1: come and go from class, and Sarah makes sure that
Speaker 1: nobody forgets about her cancer. One day, Sarah talks about
Speaker 1: how she's starting to lose her hair and maybe she
Speaker 1: should just go ahead and cut it all off. They
Speaker 1: all gather in Emily's room with hers, roll back the rug,
Speaker 1: and get ready to give Sarah a haircut. At the
Speaker 1: last minute, though she backs out. She never says why,
Speaker 1: but you know who doesn't back out, her roommate. She
Speaker 1: chops off her hair and a show of support. One day,
Speaker 1: Sarah suggests they watch a movie called A Walk to Remember.
Speaker 1: It's a teen romance and the lead female character is
Speaker 1: dying from cancer. It's the kind of cancer story that
Speaker 1: you might see on the Hallmark channel. I'm sick, I'm sick. Aprkemia.
Speaker 1: Emily isn't so sure this is a good idea. You know,
Speaker 1: we were told by Sarah and her roommate that it
Speaker 1: was fine, that they were going to be okay, they
Speaker 1: were going to hold themselves together, and it was completely
Speaker 1: the opposite. By the time the movie was over, the
Speaker 1: room was dark except for the light of the TV
Speaker 1: and off in the corner. The movie ended with Sarah
Speaker 1: and her roommate crumpled on the floor, hugging each other,
Speaker 1: crying together. It was a bad idea not to intervene.
Speaker 1: The school year ends, everyone scatters for the summer. Emily
Speaker 1: and Sarah decide to room together when they come back
Speaker 1: in the fall. One evening in July, Emily is at
Speaker 1: a wedding, and then during the reception, I get a
Speaker 1: call from Sarah that she's been in a car accident,
Speaker 1: and a bad one at that. She said that she
Speaker 1: was going to have to have her back fused. If
Speaker 1: I could almost paraphrase how she said, you know, I've
Speaker 1: been in a car accident and I'm in a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I'm gonna be able to
Speaker 1: walk again. Emily doesn't see Sarah until the start of
Speaker 1: the new fall term. They agree on a move in time,
Speaker 1: but when Emily gets there and opens the door, she
Speaker 1: discovers that Sarah has surprised her by moving in early.
Speaker 1: Here the door start to open and she's in a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: And not only is she a wheelchair, she's a She's
Speaker 1: an emmanual wheelchair and not an electric wheelchair. She also
Speaker 1: had this heavy plastic, medical looking back brace that kind
Speaker 1: of fit around her almost like a corset would. After
Speaker 1: school starts, Sarah isn't around all that much. She just
Speaker 1: kind of disappeared for a day, or disappear for two days,
Speaker 1: and I barely saw her. But then one day she
Speaker 1: started talking to me, and she was laying on her bed,
Speaker 1: and I turned around in my chair um to face
Speaker 1: her in the window, and I looked back at her,
Speaker 1: and she was smiling, talking, But the way that she
Speaker 1: was laying on the bed looked really strange, because she
Speaker 1: was laying like you were laying on your stomach, propping
Speaker 1: your your elbows up like you were flipping through a magazine,
Speaker 1: and like you had your feet kind of flipped up
Speaker 1: towards the ceiling. And I just remember looking at her,
Speaker 1: watching her smiling and with his fused back of hers.
Speaker 1: I thought, I don't know how she's this comfortable laying
Speaker 1: on the bed like she is. But that was the
Speaker 1: turning point that something is off. Emily and Sarah start
Speaker 1: to not get along, typical roommates not clicking. Emily moves out,
Speaker 1: leaving Sarah to fend for herself and the wheelchair in
Speaker 1: the back brace a few weeks later, Emily walks through
Speaker 1: the double doors of a dining hall, and there she is.
Speaker 1: I see Sarah at the top of the stairs, and
Speaker 1: she is not in a wheelchair, she is not in
Speaker 1: a back brace. She's in jeans and a T shirt.
Speaker 1: Students scurry two and throw all around them, But for
Speaker 1: Emily and Sarah time stops. Everything else around me just
Speaker 1: seems to disappear just as I step into the dining hall,
Speaker 1: looking up at her. And I looked at her, and
Speaker 1: she saw me, and she looked at me kind of
Speaker 1: with a blank stare. It wasn't a sad thing, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a mean face or anything. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of blank, and it seemed like everything else faded away,
Speaker 1: and that was like the only thing that was going
Speaker 1: on was just the two of us kind of staring
Speaker 1: at each other. Emily walks up the stairs past Sarah,
Speaker 1: neither of them saying a word. And I turned the
Speaker 1: corner to head to where the mailboxes were, and curiosity
Speaker 1: got the better of me, and I turned back to
Speaker 1: look at her. And she hadn't moved, you, like her
Speaker 1: feet or anything, but she had still turned and looked
Speaker 1: at me with that's aim look, it was game over,
Speaker 1: but her game was far from over. The worst part
Speaker 1: is I found out much, much, much, much later that
Speaker 1: it morphed into something so sinister and hurtful than I
Speaker 1: never imagined. We were warm up, you know, we were practiced.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why Emily doesn't want us to use
Speaker 1: her name. She's hoping Sarah has forgotten it. She doesn't
Speaker 1: want Sarah to ever find her. You're telling a story
Speaker 1: about someone who's such a masterminded lying, and you're like,
Speaker 1: no one's going to believe this story. I mean, it
Speaker 1: just sounds crazy to even think of, Like some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that had happened. Emily never saw Sarah again.
Speaker 1: But over the years, Sarah got better and better at
Speaker 1: insinuating herself into online support groups for people with illnesses
Speaker 1: or charities that help patients should find a way into
Speaker 1: people's hearts and lives. She obviously kept many, many, many
Speaker 1: stories straight for a very very long time. She did
Speaker 1: a good job of fooling a lot of people for
Speaker 1: a really long time, until the day she told one
Speaker 1: lie too many. This was a case that victims were
Speaker 1: very passionate about. You know, Sarah can go to prison,
Speaker 1: someone can lock her up for a crime, but where
Speaker 1: is the law? The law doesn't account for the trauma.
Speaker 1: This is a story told by the victims of what
Speaker 1: may seem like a victimless crime. Sarah delash Miant wasn't
Speaker 1: really after money or power. She needed something far more complicated,
Speaker 1: and what she stole from everyone who trusted her and
Speaker 1: believed her in the end was far more valuable than money.
Speaker 1: I'm Laura Beale. You're listening to Sympathy Pains. This is
Speaker 1: episode one. Bethany. I've been a medical journalist for a
Speaker 1: really long time, so long that there are times when
Speaker 1: I think that nothing is really going to surprise me anymore.
Speaker 1: Until it does. Until you pull a string and just
Speaker 1: keep pulling and pulling, trying to make sense of things,
Speaker 1: and in the end you're left in a place that
Speaker 1: you didn't expect to be. This is one of those stories.
Speaker 1: Bethany Turner lives in Indianapolis with her young daughter. She
Speaker 1: has a round face and soft brown eyes. She's thirty
Speaker 1: one years old. She grew up here in a tight
Speaker 1: knit religious family, pretty sheltered until she went to college
Speaker 1: in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Bethany is one of those people who
Speaker 1: not only recognizes pain and injustice. She feels it down
Speaker 1: to her bones. She's drawn to people in need, people
Speaker 1: who live in the invisible margins of society. You're helping
Speaker 1: yourself along the way to because every one of those
Speaker 1: situations I walked out of I felt like I gained
Speaker 1: more than I was giving. It's it's an environment where
Speaker 1: you get to learn from each other, but feel like
Speaker 1: you're bettering a community too. In two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: she was looking for the next place she could serve.
Speaker 1: I just finished up a term with AmeriCorps. I had
Speaker 1: done a year with them working with children in South Florida.
Speaker 1: I had traveled abroad and done some um teaching. I
Speaker 1: was searching for the kindness. I was searching for the humanity.
Speaker 1: I was searching for the community. Scrolling through the Internet,
Speaker 1: she started reading about a place in Texas called Camp Summit. Today,
Speaker 1: it spans out of our almost five acres, near a
Speaker 1: town called No Joke Paradise. It's been around in some
Speaker 1: form since the nineteen forties. It's a place where adults
Speaker 1: with disabilities can spend a week soaking in the outdoors,
Speaker 1: doing the kind of stuff that society usually makes hard
Speaker 1: for them, like swimming or putting on a talent show.
Speaker 1: This resonated with Bethany. She had had an uncle who
Speaker 1: was disabled and a friend in college who was too.
Speaker 1: That friend especially gave Bethany a whole new perspective. She
Speaker 1: encouraged her to not be afraid of being bold. She
Speaker 1: just really challenged me to be better and try different
Speaker 1: things and not make excuses. The moment Bethany drove through
Speaker 1: the gates of Camp Summit and onto the gravel driveway,
Speaker 1: she knew this is where she needed to be. You
Speaker 1: come in and there everything in campus surrounded by trees.
Speaker 1: There's um some little walkways back in there where we
Speaker 1: would take hikes into the woods a little bit, and
Speaker 1: they had some areas that were set up for bonfires.
Speaker 1: The boys camp is on the right, so there's five
Speaker 1: or six, I'd say five, maybe cabins, just a typical
Speaker 1: old school camp house. Campers could ride horses, shoot arrows,
Speaker 1: even go down a zip line. A lot of them
Speaker 1: told me it was their vacation, which hadn't really occurred
Speaker 1: to me until they said that out loud. That you know,
Speaker 1: they live in assisted living homes, or they live with
Speaker 1: caregivers or they've lived with family their whole life, and
Speaker 1: this is there one or two times a year where
Speaker 1: they can take a week to go be with friends
Speaker 1: and and it be a completely accessible experience. For many
Speaker 1: of the campers, it's the best week of their lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the best week of anybody's life that gets to go.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I mean, the staff loves
Speaker 1: it just as much, if not more, than the campers do.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very sacred community. Sacred community. I've
Speaker 1: heard this phrase a lot while working on this story.
Speaker 1: You passed that gate and everybody's just kind of their
Speaker 1: own chaotic mess, laughing and hugging, and I have have
Speaker 1: never experienced so many hugs and so much laughter in
Speaker 1: my life. And the lasting friendships that came out of
Speaker 1: just those few weeks of being there, I think are
Speaker 1: going to be lifelong. The new camp burs arrived on Sundays.
Speaker 1: During one session in the fall of two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: Bethany and the other counselors were roaming through the cabin,
Speaker 1: which was bustling with the chatter and activity of unpacking.
Speaker 1: One of the campers was in a power wheelchair in
Speaker 1: the middle of the room. Yeah, I remember her wearing
Speaker 1: a lot of like soft pink and soft clothes. She
Speaker 1: told the counselor she had muscular dystrophee. She could hold
Speaker 1: herself upright, but could barely move from the neck down.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit of arm control enough to work
Speaker 1: the toggle on her chair was all she could manage.
Speaker 1: Her name was Sarah. She was thirty years old. She
Speaker 1: said she had her nursing license and lived with her
Speaker 1: mom in southern Illinois, in a town not far from St. Louis.
Speaker 1: She kind of came across with someone who hadn't experienced
Speaker 1: a lot outside of her small town in Illinois. Bethany
Speaker 1: drifted from camper to camper, helping organize their bedding and clothes.
Speaker 1: So of the caregivers was already helping her unpack everything
Speaker 1: because she was basically just kind of pointing where she
Speaker 1: wanted things and organized. And she had she brought a
Speaker 1: c pat machine, so that she was talking to her
Speaker 1: about how to set that up. And she pointed over
Speaker 1: at the separate suitcase and she said, open that one.
Speaker 1: It has some other things in there. For the cabin.
Speaker 1: She had a bunch of crafts and things that we
Speaker 1: could do. I think she had maybe even some snacks
Speaker 1: for us. Of course, then everyone else in the cabinet
Speaker 1: is immediately drawn to her and want to see what
Speaker 1: was in there. The treats were a draw, but so
Speaker 1: was she. She seemed like a very good friend to everyone.
Speaker 1: I mean she showed up day one with crafts and
Speaker 1: things ready to go. I mean, I'm definitely not that
Speaker 1: friend most days that I come prepared with, you know,
Speaker 1: thoughtful gifts and things. And so she just she set
Speaker 1: this aura in the camp. Because of Sarah's circumstances, the
Speaker 1: counselors had to do everything for her, dress her, cut
Speaker 1: her food into bite sized pieces, even change her feminine
Speaker 1: hygiene products. They bathed her two and she liked to
Speaker 1: shower every evening. I'm five one two, and she was
Speaker 1: significantly bigger and taller than me and the other two caregivers.
Speaker 1: So whoever was lifting her from the front, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to describe, but essentially it's, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a dead lift to get the weight off of your back.
Speaker 1: But the way she would land, because of her height
Speaker 1: and her weight and her inability to help at all,
Speaker 1: our spines were going the wrong direction, and just the
Speaker 1: weight on the top of our shoulders. But they did it.
Speaker 1: It's why they were there. And as time went on,
Speaker 1: Bethany and Sarah drew closer and closer, until their lives
Speaker 1: became interwoven in unexpected ways. Bethany gave everything she had
Speaker 1: to make sure that Sarah had the kind of vacation
Speaker 1: she came for. It was just a really empowering week
Speaker 1: for a lot of reasons. She got to participate in
Speaker 1: some camp traditions and things. I remember all of the
Speaker 1: conversations of what she didn't have. She didn't have the
Speaker 1: abilitlity to move out on her own and you know,
Speaker 1: have roommates. She wanted to experience freedom, and she really
Speaker 1: wanted to go down the zip line. It's maybe a
Speaker 1: ten second ride. It assumed really fast, but we would
Speaker 1: put her power wheelchair underneath the zip line. There was
Speaker 1: kind of a sack. It has four points with some
Speaker 1: carabineers on it. To be able to lift her with
Speaker 1: some rope out of the power wheelchair and onto the
Speaker 1: zip line. Getting her onto the zip line took a
Speaker 1: lot of staff and delayed activities for other campers. She
Speaker 1: just kept throwing her neck back. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of concern on letting her do this, because she was
Speaker 1: not giving us any assistance. But she finally did it
Speaker 1: and went across and they lowered her down onto the
Speaker 1: deck to unhook the carabineers. And remember her just laying
Speaker 1: there and just sobbing. It felt like such a big
Speaker 1: moment for her. Through it all, Bethany was there for
Speaker 1: the triumphs and the fireside hard hearts. Sara seemed to
Speaker 1: make a point of having one on one time with
Speaker 1: the staff. She was very intentional with her friendships from
Speaker 1: the get go, and I think I just am drawn
Speaker 1: to deep conversation anyway. And so I mean, she told
Speaker 1: me about her home life and things like that and
Speaker 1: college friends and feels like you're packing all these things
Speaker 1: into one week, and so it felt much more heartfelt.
Speaker 1: And then when you all parted at the end of
Speaker 1: the week, what was that goodbye? Like very tearful. We
Speaker 1: were all really sad to see that weekend. Um, we've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of bonding and new relationships formed and things.
Speaker 1: And so I remember Sarah leaving. She was telling one
Speaker 1: of the other campers that she was going to fly
Speaker 1: back to St. Louis, that she had to leave early
Speaker 1: that day, to catch a flight. The goodbye would not
Speaker 1: last for long, as autumn wound down and the weather
Speaker 1: turned cooler. Camp ended, The cow Stlors packed up and dispersed.
Speaker 1: One group made plans to head up to Colorado to
Speaker 1: work at the resorts for the upcoming ski season. We
Speaker 1: were going to kind of do that for a season
Speaker 1: and figure out what we wanted to do in the spring.
Speaker 1: Sarah was calling and texting and sending gifts to all
Speaker 1: of us. I think I was the one that was
Speaker 1: probably communicating with her the most frequently. Thanksgiving week, Bethany
Speaker 1: and her family were on a road trip. Bethany realized
Speaker 1: that they'd be passing close to Sarah's home in Illinois.
Speaker 1: We met her at a cracker barrel at the outskirts
Speaker 1: of her town. She was already waiting at the restaurant
Speaker 1: when they arrived. My family introduced themselves, and uh we
Speaker 1: sat down at a table, and I remember she ordered
Speaker 1: like a thing. It was like a fried chicken or something,
Speaker 1: and so I cut everything up for you know, gave
Speaker 1: her the straw. It was like camp all over again,
Speaker 1: and we sat there in giggled. I remember she was
Speaker 1: in a great mood, super friendly, and bubbly with my family.
Speaker 1: We got ready to leave, and her story was that
Speaker 1: her mom had dropped her off and her mom had
Speaker 1: to take her nephews to their Saturday basketball game, and
Speaker 1: then when she got done with that, her mom was
Speaker 1: gonna come pick her up. But that was why she
Speaker 1: wanted to drop her off at Cracker Barrel, because at
Speaker 1: least Sarah could stay somewhere kind of in a lobby
Speaker 1: area and hang out. I hugged her, took a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures, and then my family and I got on
Speaker 1: the road. She said she had talked to her mom
Speaker 1: and her mom was gonna be there in a few
Speaker 1: minutes and I was just running late. Shortly after Bethany
Speaker 1: arrived in Colorado, her life changed dramatically. I found out
Speaker 1: I was pregnant, so I got a plane ticket back
Speaker 1: to Chattanooga to kind of figure that out. And that
Speaker 1: was really when my friendship with her took off. Was
Speaker 1: her calling and texting all the time, checking on me
Speaker 1: and the baby and asking about things that were going on.
Speaker 1: Bethany was preparing for life as a single mom. I
Speaker 1: was in such a raw, vulnerable place in my life,
Speaker 1: and I felt like she was offering to be a
Speaker 1: new foundation and a new friend. I cried to her
Speaker 1: a lot about different hiccups that were happening about the
Speaker 1: pregnancy and different things that were just really hard situations,
Speaker 1: and she would always cry with me, is what I
Speaker 1: remember now, like looking back on all those conversations, Like
Speaker 1: if I was happy and I was doing well, then
Speaker 1: so was she. You know. If I was happy with
Speaker 1: work and I had a really good day, then so
Speaker 1: did she. But if if we got on the phone
Speaker 1: and she asked about something that was a little sore
Speaker 1: for me at the moment and I started crying, then
Speaker 1: she'd start crying. For a long distance friendship, it quickly
Speaker 1: moved to unvarnished emotion. Sarah talked about how lonely she
Speaker 1: was because she didn't have friends out there, and how
Speaker 1: the friends that she did have, you know, didn't want
Speaker 1: to invite her to go do things because they wanted
Speaker 1: to go out to the bars, for example, and they
Speaker 1: didn't know where they wanted to go to a restaurant,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know how to transfer Sarah if Sarah
Speaker 1: had to go to the restroom. Bethany was also on
Speaker 1: her own preparing for the day when she would suddenly
Speaker 1: not be I just remember there being a lot of
Speaker 1: days where between, you know, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: am I going to financially support this child. I need
Speaker 1: to find a place to live, I need to find
Speaker 1: a better steady income and figure out how to get
Speaker 1: her and you know, some sort of childcare so that
Speaker 1: I could, Like there were all of the emotions that
Speaker 1: are attached to anything that deals with any of that.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of stress and anxiety and sleepless
Speaker 1: nights and crying, and at every point of that, Sarah
Speaker 1: tried to involve herself and cry with me and reflect
Speaker 1: the same emotions as if she understood. I started to
Speaker 1: feel an obligation to my friendship with her because of
Speaker 1: the tears and because of what she was asking for
Speaker 1: from me, just at an emotional level, and I knew
Speaker 1: that she was also doing that for me. It felt
Speaker 1: like they were two women, each providing a stabilizing force
Speaker 1: during a time of uncertainty. There was one weird thing, though,
Speaker 1: something that wouldn't make sense to Bethany until years later.
Speaker 1: I remember her asking several times for my ultrasounds, and
Speaker 1: I was always driving when she asked me, and I go, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I park, you know, when I get to where
Speaker 1: I'm going, I'll send it. I always forgot to send it.
Speaker 1: She kept pestering me about the ultrasound, and I started
Speaker 1: to get to a point where I felt bad because
Speaker 1: it was just pregnancy brain. I just kept forgetting to
Speaker 1: send it to her, but she asked multiple times. During
Speaker 1: their conversations. Sarah was making plans to return to Camp
Speaker 1: Summit for the spring session. We talked a lot the
Speaker 1: two prior weeks before she went to camp, but she
Speaker 1: was anxious about it because it wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: the same staff, and so I think Sarah was really
Speaker 1: nervous about whether or not they were going to have
Speaker 1: the same level of expertise with the care, if it
Speaker 1: was going to be as smooth as it was In
Speaker 1: the spring of two thousand sixteen, Sarah went back to
Speaker 1: Camp Summit just after lunchtime sometime early afternoon. I was
Speaker 1: driving to my job and I got a call from
Speaker 1: a Texas number that I didn't have saved. It was
Speaker 1: the assistant director at the time, and she said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry to call you like this. She said,
Speaker 1: yours was the hardest call to make. Bethany had just
Speaker 1: pulled into the parking lot. She stopped the car and
Speaker 1: braced herself. There's a staff alumni page for the camp,
Speaker 1: and it's very very frequently that they'll post something about
Speaker 1: former campers who have passed. So I thought that was
Speaker 1: where the conversation was going. I had no idea, she said, Bethany,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that I have to be the one
Speaker 1: to tell you this. She said, Sarah was here this week,
Speaker 1: and uh, I said, yeah, I know. We've we've kept
Speaker 1: in contact. She told Bethany that they had been contacted
Speaker 1: by a pastor from Illinois a few weeks earlier. He
Speaker 1: was inquiring about Sarah's relationship with camp and just wanted
Speaker 1: to know if she was going to be down there
Speaker 1: during certain weeks as a volunteer. And so some of
Speaker 1: the staff had gotten involved in this conversation and said, well,
Speaker 1: know she's here as she's coming as a camper. And
Speaker 1: this pastor said, well, I am a pastor of some
Speaker 1: of her relatives, and she's been caught in a lot
Speaker 1: of lies before and we've tried to catch her and
Speaker 1: she's always been able to sneak her way out. He
Speaker 1: even had proof to back up what he was claiming.
Speaker 1: Here's examples of her social media posts. Here's a picture
Speaker 1: of her skiing in Colorado with her mom. Bethany gripped
Speaker 1: the phone tighter, almost unable to breathe. She stared out
Speaker 1: of the windshield. Everything was going blurry. What the camp
Speaker 1: had agreed to do because the pastor and a couple
Speaker 1: of family members said, can you please just let us
Speaker 1: come and confront her at camp, because we've tried and
Speaker 1: tried to get her help, and we've tried to confront
Speaker 1: her in the lies, and we know that things like
Speaker 1: this have been going on, and so what camp agreed
Speaker 1: to do was to facilitate an interaction between them during
Speaker 1: an activity where none of the other campers would see,
Speaker 1: which was extremely extremely important to the staff. The pastor
Speaker 1: told the camp employees when they would be coming. As
Speaker 1: the staff waited in the office, they saw a van
Speaker 1: come down the drive and stop. They radioed for Sarah
Speaker 1: to come to the office. A couple of family members
Speaker 1: in her pastor got out of the van. Sarah pulled
Speaker 1: up in her wheelchair, saw who it was, and camp
Speaker 1: staff told me. She got up out of the chair,
Speaker 1: got in the van, shut the door, and they drove off.
Speaker 1: There wasn't an apology. There wasn't There wasn't even anything
Speaker 1: from the family as far as we'll follow up with
Speaker 1: you once we get home. Nobody heard from him. She
Speaker 1: drives off, and they're just sitting there, stunned, having to
Speaker 1: figure out how to deal with the fallout of that,
Speaker 1: how to explain to other campers why she's gone. Sitting
Speaker 1: in her car talking to the camp assistant director, Bethany erupted,
Speaker 1: I remember screaming at her for probably about ten seconds,
Speaker 1: and that's not my nature at all. And I stopped
Speaker 1: and I apologized and I said, I'm so sorry. All
Speaker 1: of that was out of line. And she goes, Bethany,
Speaker 1: I totally get it, because I did the same thing
Speaker 1: to my boss. She said, none of us know how
Speaker 1: to deal with this, like we don't know what to
Speaker 1: believe anymore, what we're supposed to do. A couple of
Speaker 1: days later, Sarah called in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: Bethany didn't answer. Her emotional well had dried up. For
Speaker 1: the next few days and weeks, Bethany was in a daze,
Speaker 1: and then things got creepy. After she was exposed. I
Speaker 1: started getting random phone calls from an unknown number, and
Speaker 1: I would answer it and it would be someone breathing
Speaker 1: heavy on the on the other end of the line
Speaker 1: or cackling. And that happened for several weeks um and
Speaker 1: then I started getting screenshots of my current location sent
Speaker 1: from like a like a Yahoo phone number. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was her. I was also,
Speaker 1: you know, a pregnant, about to be single mom. There
Speaker 1: could have been multiple reasons, and I just don't know
Speaker 1: the answer. Bethany was haunted by the betrayal of her rust.
Speaker 1: One day, she called a friend from the camp, someone
Speaker 1: who had been her mentor. I remember sitting in a
Speaker 1: Chick fil A drive through and calling her and having
Speaker 1: to pull over after I got my chicken nuggets, and
Speaker 1: I was just kind of unloading on her, like it.
Speaker 1: I think it just had hit me because I had
Speaker 1: googled Sarah and I had seen the photos of her
Speaker 1: skiing in Colorado right around the same times when I
Speaker 1: had been up there working. Every time I googled something
Speaker 1: about her, I would find something new and a new blog,
Speaker 1: a new email address. I mean, I was digging deep
Speaker 1: at that point trying to find where does this end?
Speaker 1: Bethany didn't even know the half of it. For more
Speaker 1: than a decade, Sarah had built friendship after friendship on
Speaker 1: a foundation of lies, and even after Camp Summit, she
Speaker 1: wasn't done. I knew of her as a young mom
Speaker 1: whose husband was away, who was battling stage four cancer.
Speaker 1: She was my friend, I loved her, she was bregnant,
Speaker 1: she was myrself. So to find out that she miss
Speaker 1: scared that, you know, it mess with me. The story
Speaker 1: really is unbelievable that someone could get away with all
Speaker 1: the things that she did for all those years, for
Speaker 1: so long. Who is Sarah? I don't even think she knows.
Speaker 1: Sarah makes herself up as she goes along. Sarah is
Speaker 1: an empty shell. Sarah. I don't know what happened to her.
Speaker 1: Maybe Sarah doesn't even know herself. But her victims know
Speaker 1: exactly what Sarah did to them, and they were faced
Speaker 1: with a problem. How do you find justice when no
Speaker 1: law has been broken, but on the inside you are.
Speaker 1: That's this season Unsympathy Pains. Sympathy Paines is a production
Speaker 1: of Neon hum Media and I Heart Radio. I'm Your host.
Speaker 1: Laura Beale I wrote and reported the episodes. Natalie Wrinn
Speaker 1: is the lead producer. Our editor is Katherine St. Louis.
Speaker 1: Associate producer is Rufaro Mazzarua. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch.
Speaker 1: Samantha Allison is our production manager. Fact checking by Jacqueline Colletti.
Speaker 1: Jesse Pearlstein composed the theme song and music heard throughout
Speaker 1: this series. Additional tracks are by Blue Dot Sessions and
Speaker 1: Epidemic Sound. Scott Somerville is our engineer and sound designer.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano from I Heart Radio. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Carrie Lieberman and Bethan Macaluso. Executive producer at
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio is Dylan Fagen.