Every theft that followed was built on a foundation of a father’s faith in his son.

That is what elder financial exploitation almost always is, I have since learned — I see it now three or four times a week in the people who come through the center’s doors.

It is not strangers with crowbars.

It is sons, daughters, nephews, the trusted ones, the ones given the keys, converting love into access and access into theft, and counting on the fact that the victim will be too ashamed, or too loyal, or too heartbroken to ever call it what it is.

My grandfather had refused to be too anything.

He had grieved, and trusted, and been robbed for it — and then, unlike almost everyone this happens to, he had gone quiet and built the machine that would set it right.