Now, let’s get one thing straight. I do not advocate, or defend, criminality. But every now and then, you read about a crime that really makes your heart sing a bit. This time, we’re in Michigan, where a 53-year-old banker, Patricia Keezer, has been sentenced for embezzling funds at her bank and giving them away to needy customers to help them with car repairs, mortgage payments and taxes.
What a hero! Sort of. Check out the quote:
“I would take other people’s problems and make them my problems,” Keezer told the judge. “I do have a problem with giving things away.”
It melts you a little bit, no? I know it’s wrong, I know it’s illegal, I know the money wasn’t hers to give. But there’s a little part of me that’s really glad she did it, although not for her sake, given that she now faces a year and a day in prison. (Why the day, judge, why the day?)
It sounds like even the judge was pretty much won over:
“You are like a modern-day Robin Hood,” Battani [the judge] said of the folklore hero who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. “Those Robin Hood days are long over.”
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Well, maybe they are, Battani, but once in a while I reckon we should just stand up and say, “You know what, you modern-day Robin Hoods? We salute you. Yes we do.”
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