The Olympic Swimmer Story

The Olympic Swimmer Story
                                                                              2003

                        And how my wife and I did our part to assist the American  Olympic swimmers

                                                                       Written 2019

                                                                       Howard Yasgar

By 2003, my wife and I, while living in Miami, had  been visiting the Florida Keys for many years.

Originally, when we first started going there, we had a Townhouse Condominium at the Executive Bay Club, which was located at mile marker 87 on US 1.

Staying at Executive Bay Club was a wonderful experience, but there was one drawback, we had to keep our boat at a local marina that was a couple of miles down the road.

When we heard that the Marina was going to be sold, we realized we needed to buy a home that was on the water, we needed it so we could have a place to keep our boat , so that’s when we started house hunting.

Then, once we purchased a home on the water, we decided that rather than sell our condominium at Executive bay, we would start renting it out.

We opted to use a local real estate agent to assist us.

One of the reasons we used an local rental agent, was because they took over the problem of advertising the unit, as well as qualifying any potential renters.

The agent would also assists the potential renter to fill out the condo association papers which are required.

All of this was all supposed to be done for us by the real estate agent, to make sure the renters were qualified.

Because all of this takes a bit of time, so we felt that by our employing a real estate agent, they would take care of everything for us.    

The Condo at Executive Bay, was usually kept rented, for a year or two at a time.

Whenever a tenant left, it gave us the opportunity, to clean, paint and do whatever repairs were necessary.

In 2003 our unit at Executive Bay Club was empty.

Having no one in the unit for a change,  gave us the opportunity, to fix the place up.

We wanted to paint the unit, also have the second floor carpets needed cleaning, we also wanted to replace all the window treatments.

The condo had an older hot water heater and we decided to replace with a more modern “On Demand” hot water heater, but having done that it necessitated my doing some tile work in the downstairs kitchen closet where the former hot water tank was.  

In the condo, the rear of the first floor was all glass sliding doors, there were also two smaller glass sliding doors, one located in the downstairs front kitchen area, and  another in the front guest bedroom upstairs, so we decided to install all new Levelors that we purchased from Home Depot.

We were taking our time, fixing the place up, and we thought that as soon as I finished the tile work we would have our real estate agent advertise the unit for rent again.

It was a Sunday afternoon, when I loaded our car up with everything I needed to do the tile work in the closet.

As we drove up to the parking space in front of the condo, there was a U-Haul trailer parked there, and the front door of our condo was open.  

Neither my wife Katherine  or I had any idea of what was going on, we hadn’t authorized anyone to rent the unit.

As we were standing there a tall lanky black guy with a slight Arabic accent came out of the front door.

I asked him what the hell was going on?

He said he was a U.S. Olympic swimmer and he was in the Keys to train for the upcoming Olympics.

While my wife and I are probably just as supportive of the Olympics as anyone, his answer didn’t sit well with us.

While my wife called the real estate agent, I went into the unit to repair the tile.

While I was there, the Olympic swimmer introduced me to his wife.

She appeared to be a blond American girl, and they had a blond baby daughter that looked to be perhaps 3 or 4 years old.  

His wife said that they were from Alabama, but  I have to admit, It all looked and sounded pretty strange to us.

It appears that our real estate agent had authorized these people to occupy our condo without our permission.

The agent told my wife not to worry as she had  the rent and a deposit.

When we asked her if she had the condo associations permission, it appears she didn’t, but she would get it taken care of.

What she told us was that since our town “The Village of Islands in Islamorada” had an Olympic sized swimming pool in our park, the Olympic swimmers were given permission to use it for training at no cost. However, no arrangements had ever been made to house the Olympic swimmers in the keys.

So it appears our Arabic guy, just loaded up a U-Haul trailer with his wife, and his kid, as well as some furniture, and headed to the Keys with no place to stay.

It seemed to us that everyone that was involved in this was so enthralled in trying to assist the Olympic swimmers, they all bypassed normal protocol. Thinking they were in some way doing their part in assisting the United States, us too.

Four months passed with no problems.

Now, the front entranceway into our condo had a cement walkway, and one of the concrete squares in it was cracked by the roots of a nearby tree.

As it was dangerous, the association decided to replace the concrete square.

By the time we stopped by to see it, the new concrete had already hardened, and our Olympic swimmer had scraped in a very long message in Arabic.

He had completely defaced the concrete walkway.

We could see that no one from the association was anxious to say anything to him about why he did it.   

After eight months passed, Katherine noticed two rent checks had not appeared.

That’s when we drove over to the unit and found it was empty.  

Well, it was not exactly empty, there was children’s furniture and trash everywhere.

The newly painted walls were all marked with a child’s scribbling and it was all done  in wax crayon which is next to impossible to remove.

I couldn’t believe it, even the brand new Home Depot Levelors we had just bought had what looked like bullet holes in them.

I tried to figure out how they made round holes in the Levelors, but I couldn’t.  

We found out that our swimmer and his family  had lived there for two months without any water or electricity, and then they had left without saying anything to anyone.

When they left they took with them the Executive Bay access cards.         

My wife called the Olympic swimmers wife at their home in Alabama, and she asked her to please send us the rent that was due and the Executive Bay access cards.

My wife asked her, “As a parent, how could you allow your child to scribble and deface all the walls with crayon?”

Her reply to my wife was, “You are just being derogatory towards us”.

Eventually the manager at Executive bay had all the Arabic writing on the walkway cemented over.

After all this, I can say, I think we have done more than our part to assist the Olympic swimming team.