Wyoming
'Dad is not alone': Wyoming family sounds alarm on dangers of financial elder abuse
It hasn’t been an easy last couple of years for Jerry Saunders or his three daughters.
“Our dad was diagnosed in 2018 with dementia,” says daughter Stacy Sweeney.
A retired obstetrician and gynecologist who delivered hundreds of babies over the years in Sheridan, Wyoming, Saunders was later declared incompetent. That triggered his wife as power of attorney and some surprises for his children from his first wife, who had passed away.
“Over the last two years we have made some huge discoveries most of his assets had been taken,” says Sweeney.
Most of his assets, including his IRA, had been changed to his wife’s name while Saunders was moved to a place that his daughters say he never wanted to be—a nursing home.
“So had she predeceased my dad, if we wouldn’t have discovered this, he would have been penniless. And it was his hard work over 40 years of medical practice that built up this money to take care of him,” Sweeney says.
MTN News
The National Council on Aging says mental impairment, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, make older adults more vulnerable to abuse—which can take many forms—including financial.
“I think a lot of it comes down to some kind of financial exploitation. So, families taking advantage of either a housing situation, vehicles of an elderly person going into care, or direct access to bank accounts,” says Morgan Dake, legal counsel in the pro bono department for Crowley Fleck in Billings.
She says the situation that has caused so much emotional strain for Saunders’ daughters is more common than you might think.
“A lot of the abuse that happens is actually from known people in your life. So, you need to identify early on who the people are that you truly can trust. Set yourself up that they have your information and that they can access it when needed,” she says.
After an expensive court battle, Saunders’ daughters were awarded power of attorney, trust advisor, and caretaker.
“The main reason we wanted to bring this story forward is Dad is not alone. This happens all the time where a trusted family member will take somebody’s assets,” Stacy says.
Stacy has moved him in with her family in North Carolina and says he is thriving there.
“Family is so important to my dad and being in our home where our kids and grandkids will come in and out, and dogs– all the things that he loves, I think it will be really good for him,” she says.
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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