By Marcia Yudkin

Dear Arms Reach Beach Board of Directors:

I hereby apply for the newly created post of Hospitality Enforcement Officer (HEO) for Arms Reach Beach.

What are my qualifications for this position? First, I’ve lived at Arms Reach Beach for seventeen years. I’m deeply familiar with the property, our bylaws, and most of the long-time residents, even those whose names I don’t know.  

Second, unless the weather is really nasty, I go for a long early-morning walk every day that takes me the whole length of the complex and out the back gate. Since management and our maintenance workers don’t start their shifts until 8:30 a.m., I notice things they wouldn’t see.

For instance, twice I saw that the lawn sprinklers for Pod F weren’t working, and I alerted Juancho, who fixed them right away. Many times I’ve spotted items grossly mis-sorted in the recycling bins, especially in Pod H: paperboard orange juice cartons with the aluminum cans, plastic detergent jugs with the wine bottles. Come on!  

The more egregious violations, of course, have to do with unauthorized overnight parking.  As you all well know, there simply aren’t enough spaces for cars without a resident sticker or a guest pass. Case in point: the faded blue BMW convertible whose owner appears to be having an affair with a separated but not divorced mother of four in Pod M.  

During the homeowners association debate over creating the HEO position, a couple of people disparaged the idea of a “designated busybody” or an “internal spy.” I don’t see things that way. As HEO, I would be enforcing the homeowners association rules that the owners have approved for keeping other neighbors in line—everybody but themselves, which is the root of the problems.

Note that I don’t go looking for trouble to complain about. It finds me. It’s just like with proofreading, which was my moonlighting job in the 1990s. Typos jump out at me. I can’t help perceiving mistakes. Ooh, that’s “it’s” when it should be “its,” or “geneology” instead of “genealogy!” At Arms Reach Beach, infractions of the bylaws pop out at me, the same way other folks see our roofs are pointed, or the curb paint is red.

I’m not being finicky or wanting power over my neighbors. You see, I recognize the consequences of people breaking our rules. Take the child, five or six years old, who visits relatives at Arms Reach Beach every weekend. Spring and summer without fail, she plucks a flower from our central roundabout and puts it in her hair. Her grandmother—the South Asian lady in Pod B with dyed black hair—beams at her as if she’s the cutest thing in the universe. But we have a limited number of flowers in bloom. By often appropriating some for herself, this little girl is diminishing the pleasure available to all of us and our visitors.

As HEO, I realize I could become a target. The BMW owner, for example, probably has a very good clandestine reason for parking in the exact spot where he does, near Pod Q but not in view of anyone’s kitchen window. Likewise, the couple who appear to be running an undercover Airbnb rental in Pod E will not be happy to know that the HEO is onto them. One morning, as two young women waited for an Uber in front of their unit, one said to the other, “Remember, if anyone asks, Mr. ___ is our uncle.” Hah. Uncle? She didn’t even pronounce Mr. ___’s name correctly!

Just one more point relevant to my application. For me personally, there would be a mental-health benefit of becoming the official HEO. When violations of Arms Reach Beach policies pop out at me, I’ve scolded myself: “It’s not my business. It’s not my business.” But as HEO, it would be my business, and by reining in the cheaters, slobs, and downright lawbreakers like the indoor marijuana growing guy in Pod K, I would have the satisfaction of knowing that I was contributing to the long-term harmony and health of our lovely community.

Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Mary Lou Krakelheimer

~

The above text was discovered in the “Drafts” folder of Ms. Krakelheimer’s email program. From what we can tell, it was revised more than once but had not yet been sent.

—Respectfully submitted, Detective Marco Gracioso, Homicide