Mob Daughter

Magdelena Orestia Bococi: how could I ever forget a woman with a handle like that? Maggie, as my simple mind abbreviated her polysyllabic nomenclature, was a devoted Catholic of Greek and Italian heritage, was the daughter of a New York mob don, was abandoned by her mother who pocketed ten million dollars after her husband was rubbed out, spent her childhood in foster homes where no one could trace her underworld father and embezzling mother, and had, as you may have surmised, difficulty dealing with reality. Also, she'd repeated this story so many times and for so long that she fully believed it.

The truth was that she was Sarah Sender, born and raised in Denver, her father owned a chain of hardware stores in the Rocky Mountain State, her mother was an elementary school teacher, and they were both very much alive and operating within the law. It is also true that no big money had ever passed through their hands and, though it burst the balloon of everyone who heard it, Sarah was pure English, not having a molecule of Greek, Italian, or any Mediterranean blood in any vein, artery, or arteriole of her mentally deranged body.

I met Magdelena Orestia Bococi, as she insisted being called, in the late 70's when I first became a Program Manager. One of my jobs was to run each Resident through a battery of tests that showed their reading, writing, arithmetic, and life skills. when I approached M.O.B. I was hit by a resistance so powerful that had I not known her true identity and

background I could easily have believed her made-up story. She absolutely refused to write her name on any form, DEMANDED that her Social Security number never be used, and insisted that no paper trail whatsoever be left that could lead THEM to her whereabouts. She so lived her made-up reality that she demanded that everyone else accept it or give lip service to it too.

Now that I am retired from Sugar Loaf, and its ten-facility Circuit, I can make a confession: in her case I faked the tests. We were ordered (a very strong word for a health center) always to speak the truth, but in the case of M.O.B., I simply couldn't. So I bubbled in the answers I thought Sarah would score and sent them in.

The reason Sugar Loaf was so insistent on above-board behavior from its Staff was that yearly its records were audited. In order to keep our accreditation and license active, we simply had to be accountable for everything that happened under our roof. That, and the fact that we got funding and grants according to accurate details and an official recording system. So if any glitches showed up, the whole system would crash, many heads would roll, and ten doors would close. In short, Sugar Loaf HAD to maintain absolute accountability and adhere to the truth.

I must admit that as I write this I am smiling openly. My vanity glows because I suspect I am the single person who ever lied in the Circuit. I oversaw volumes of reports through the decades and I can attest to the accuracy of all those Attendance Forms, Medical Dose Records, Behavior Charts, Financial Reports --- oh, so MANY ways we reported to State. And each was exact to the letter and number. That is, all but the single case of one Magdelena Orestia Bococi from New York, father deceased, mother's whereabouts unknown, goes by an ID number and not a Social Security number, and tests out as a literate young lady with an IQ of 110.

It turns out that simple Sarah Sender, IQ 76, was a born schizophrenic, although true to my policy, I won't go beyond that. I will tell you that because of the severity of her case and inability to function in everyday society, she was institutionalized at an early age. It was in one of those facilities that she conjured her elaborate, fictitious autobiography; it was obviously her way of explaining why and how she had no permanent house or parents.

Had Sarah stayed at home to live out her fantasy all would have been well and good. It was when she jumped ship that things got hairy. Her first run-away from the specter of the mob was at seventeen and she ran ever after. Convinced they would catch up with her and avenge her father's underhanded dealings and mother's ten-million-dollar embezzlement, the simple girl went from one Greyhound Bus to another, one half-way house to another, in and out of Shelters, through the many Health Care units, always insisting that her true identity must remain secret. But true to her confusion of mixed fantasy and reality, she proudly blurted out her mob story when she first entered every environment, quickly urging that Staff keep it secret.

Dear Sarah, had she not been lead by her affliction but guided into a creative writing curriculum she might have been heralded as one of our great writers of fantasy. As it was, Sarah Sender aka Magdelena Orestia Bococi, was a perfect example of the thin line between insanity and creativity.

No words about this handicapped girl would be complete without mentioning her primary, non-mob obsessions: boom boxes and cell phones. It turns out that every time she entered an institution she insisted on purchasing one of each, and upon transferring out, she sold them either

to a Resident or Staff for far less than the purchase price. Her parents, who paid her bills, were used to this idiosyncrasy, and they willingly went along with it. Without going clinical, it seems that part of her self-made scenario was that through these two devices she could keep up with the news --- know what the mob was up to and if it was closing in on her. Though she seldom used her cell phones, she insisted she needed them to call her lawyers to bail her out and the FBI to protect her. These fears were as fanciful as her entire scenario, of course, and all to perpetuate her paranoia. Whatever they were, they certainly added color to the girl's persona.

The first time I met Sarah she had just returned from her most recent Greyhound tour of the South. She'd sneaked out of a Health Care facility in Wisconsin and, boombox and cellphone disposed of, had used all her funds to keep one step ahead of the phantom mob. The State Police was alerted and, because her modus operandi was so predictable, was picked up in New Orleans with no hitches. In fact, Sarah was happy when the police intervened because it fit her scenario perfectly: being captured was proof that the law was protecting her from the insidious, always-chasing mob. I told the girl that she should write her story down, using a pseudonym, of course, but she refused on the grounds that if it ever found its way into print, the long arm of the underground would hunt her down. You can never win against such logic.

The last time I saw Sarah she was waving from the back window of a Greyhound heading God-only-knows-where. You see, she HAD to keep moving. But everyone knew that the State Police would be alerted, she'd be taken once again into Protective Custody, and her story would be told to another facility. I was just one person in a long succession.