February 18, 2005: Non
Newsworthy News
By Ahchie
Dig
if you will a picture – it is 10:30 at night and you are watching the
latest episode of CSI: Ukraine. Suddenly there is a sharp rapping at your
back door. Not expecting visitors, and in your CSI-induced paranoid state
of mind, you cautiously approach your door. Through the door, you ask who
it is and what they want, and are met with ominous silence in return. You
sneak a peek out the window and notice two shadowy figures outside. Your heart
pounding, with sounds of gunshots and screaming on a busy Kiev street coming
from your television, you pray that the interlopers will leave. You call 911
and after the authorities arrive you open your door and you step outside.
That’s when you notice the package. The package looks harmless enough,
with a pink heart on top with some sort of message on it. The police determine
that the package is a plate of homemade cookies and the cryptic note reads,
“Have a great night. Love, the T and L Club.” Not knowing if the
T and L Club will be back to make sure you have a great night, the officer
recommends that you stay the night at a hotel. Afraid for your life, you quickly
pack an overnight bag and abandon your home. As you leave you try to imagine
your fear as a white ball of healing light and you realize that one day you
are going to die. Suddenly you feel free to do anything.
The above dramatization almost happened last summer. While CSI: Ukraine hasn’t quite made it to the States yet, a 49-year-old woman was at home one night minding her own business. At 10:30 she heard the loud knocking, asked who it was, and saw the shadowy figures outside. However, instead of freeing herself, she had a panic attack, compiling doctor’s fees in excess of $900 the next day. The cookie delivery was from two teenage girls who just wanted to spread some anonymous kindness.
This is one of those stories in which all sides seem to be acting in an equally moronic way. The incident in Colorado led to a lawsuit in which the girls were ordered to pay $930. The aftermath has been ugly as things have gotten out of hand and no one seems to possess any amount of common sense. The parties in question are:
The girls leaving the cookies late at night
Surely
they must realize that not everyone is going to just jump for joy when they
open their door to a late night knocking to find cookies on their porch. Chances
are that upon seeing the cookies people are not going to gaze off into the
night sky thinking about how nice it is that there is still kindness out there
while “What a Wonderful World” plays in the back of their mind.
It seems reasonable that people could be suspicious, like when you find homemade
treats in your children’s trick or treat bags on Halloween. What happens
to most homemade Halloween treats when the parents don’t know where
they came from? They get thrown away. Even though the probability of poison
or razor blades may be remote, why take the chance? The same is the case here
and, at age 18, the girls are old enough to understand that concept. They
should also know better than to knock on someone’s back door instead
of the more commonly accepted front door.
The woman receiving the cookies
It
is understandable to be a bit anxious when you get a late night knock at your
door, then see two figures outside who do not answer when you ask who it is,
then to find cookies were left. But to require a doctor’s visit the
next day? To have the incident so shock you that you have a severe panic attack?
To take it as far as a lawsuit in small claims court, seeking $3000? The reaction
to the late night visit is extreme. If she is pushed over the edge that easily,
then perhaps she should figure out a way to get some kind of decent medical
coverage, because at age 49, the bills are only going to get worse from here
on out. Perhaps she should consider a move to Canada.
The normal reaction would have been to toss the cookies (thrown in the garbage, not eaten then thrown up) and chalk it up to some childish prank. If the mischief continued, then it could be dealt with in an appropriate manner. Even sheriff deputies, who responded to the call after the cookies were found and did not know what to make of the anonymous gift, contributed to the fear by recommending that the homeowner stay at a hotel that night.
It turns out that the woman and her husband have sued or been sued at least nine times since 1991 and two more court actions have involved restraining orders. The woman is probably the type to argue to death even the smallest points. And she is probably the type to be unable to let things go when she feels she has been wronged in some way. This is not the type of person you want to get stuck talking to after school when you go to pick up your children.
The church both families go to
The families supposedly tried to work it out with the church, but did not
come up with any way to resolve their differences. The father of one of the
girls has gone so far as to get a restraining order against the woman’s
husband. Now the people who received the cookies will probably stop going
to their church. The woman will leave her position as the director of a local
food bank, and her family will talk about how they should move away. In light
of the woman’s previous experience going to court, it is likely that
the church was going to have a difficult time settling anything, but of all
people to consult, it would seem that the people at their church should have
been able to talk some sense into the families involved.
The people responding to the story
The
woman and her family have now been met with a barrage of profanity-laced phone
calls and threatening letters. Instead of just shaking their heads at the
silliness of the story and moving on, they have placed the cookie girls on
a pedestal and have made the cookie recipients out to be evil incarnate. Why
are people wasting their time sending empty cookie boxes to the woman’s
house? What would move a person to actually call the woman’s husband
and tell him that he “should be found dead in a ditch?” Zed the
Exterminator may have seen “men rape an old crippled woman in a wet
ditch,” but that was a different time and place and seems rather inappropriate
for the panic stricken, lawsuit happy woman or her husband.
People also responded with an outpouring of money that easily took care of the $900 lawsuit judgment. It is odd what people will feel compelled to give their money to. There is no reason that this story should have received worldwide attention. The girls went on “Good Morning America” and a cookie company has made a “Kindness Cookie” in their honor. Simply put, the reaction is way over the top.
This story does not warrant nine articles in the Denver Post. The whole story should be just a footnote that could possibly serve as a cautionary tale. The over-reaction by the public is typical of how minor stories get blown out of proportion and capture an undue amount of attention. The irony is that all of the unwelcome attention given to the woman who filed suit is actually the direct result of her inability to just let things go.
Couple take lumps since cookie suit
Denver Post, Electa Draper, February 17, 2005
More coverage: February 11 | February 9 | February 7 | February 6 | February 4
Durango
- Herb Young turned the telephone off again Tuesday after it rang at 12:40
a.m.
One recent caller had told him that "you should be found dead in a ditch."
Nine out of 10 calls to his house are from "crackpots," he said, ever since a plate of cookies and a case in La Plata County Small Claims Court turned life upside down.
Since his wife, 49-year-old Wanita "Renea" Young, successfully sued two 18-year-old girls for scaring her with a late-night knock on the back door and a then-anonymous cookie drop on the porch, she and Herb have spent the last two weeks trying to defend themselves. A barrage of crank calls and hate mail and truckloads of strange packages have been aimed at their rural home just south of Durango.
Almost everyone but the magistrate has taken the girls' side in the court conflict over about $900, part of the medical bill for Renea Young's anxiety attack. The case made headlines around the world.
"Last week the calls were all day, every day, and all night," Herb Young said. "It's slowing down."
He estimated that one-third of the calls to his home have been from the area, but two-thirds are from all over the country.
Many strangers have made their own cookie deliveries to the Youngs, everything from elaborately wrapped and expensively stocked gift baskets to an envelope holding Oreo crumbs.
Nationally syndicated radio talk-show host Michael Gallagher sent 1,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies to U.S. troops abroad in honor of the "Colorado Cookie Caper" and the two girls who were sued, Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zilletti.
On Tuesday, the Youngs' rural mail carrier told Herb Young that she had two small truckfuls of packages for him, but they appeared to be empty boxes.
"Send them back," he said he told her. He wasn't sure how to interpret empty boxes.
"Some people have been almost pleasant and said they were just calling 'to voice my opinion,"' he said. "The flip side is that I've heard every profanity you can imagine. And people threatening to cut me up or beat me up or my wife."
One caller told the Youngs that "you are what's wrong with society."
"All this over cookies," Renea Young said.
She is so devastated, she said, that she hasn't been back to her part-time job as a Wal-Mart cashier.
"Our home is like a funeral parlor," Renea Young said. "They've robbed us of our laughter. My spirit, my soul, is damaged."
She questions whether she can continue as president of the board and director of the Durango Food Bank, a volunteer position she has held for 16 years. The charity, where co-workers say Young is a dedicated and capable leader, gives away 8,000 pounds of food a month to families in need.
"The food bank has been my passion. It would be a real loss to me," Young said. "But I wouldn't want to bring any harm to it."
She said the deluge of criticism has been hard on their 19-year-old daughter, a friend of Taylor Ostergaard's.
Herb Young says his once-bubbly daughter is now frequently in tears.
"I love Taylor," Renea Young says. "She's a super girl. She's been in my house many times. I don't know Lindsey, but I'm sure she's nice too. I never believed the girls meant any harm. It was just a prank."
In spite of this, she said, she sued for good reasons that she doesn't think have been spelled out in the media.
On July 31, between about 9:15 p.m. and 10:45 p.m., eight scattered rural families received surprise plates of homemade cookies with paper hearts that said, "Have a great night, the T and L Club." The Youngs' delivery was just after 10:30 p.m.
Renea Young was alone in her isolated country home with her daughter and ailing elderly mother. Her husband was out of town.
The girls pounded loudly on the back door and didn't answer when Renea Young called out, "Who's there?" Young said she could see only shadowy figures that ran away to a car parked outside the gate.
She was so frightened, she had an anxiety attack but thought it might be a heart attack, she said. When a sheriff's deputy came to the house, he found the cookies and concluded that no crime had been committed. But Young said she still felt ill the next day and went to the hospital.
Young soon figured out who had left the cookies and complained to Taylor's mother, Jill Ostergaard. She said Ostergaard and Lindsey's mother, Martha, offered, "even insisted" on paying almost $900 in medical bills not covered by insurance. But the months dragged on, and the families never sent the money.
"I really tried to settle this out of court four different times," Young says. "I'm not sure where it all went bad."
The Ostergaard and Zilletti families said they first waited to see a bill. Then they asked Young to sign an agreement that, with the roughly $900 paid, she would not make additional claims. Young said she was bothered by that request and the lack of trust she believed it signaled. By Dec. 30, she said, she felt that she had to go to court.
Whether the girls meant harm or not, Young told The Post, they had been responsible
for frightening her family and sending her to the emergency room. She offered
this analogy:
"I backed into a car in a parking lot. I didn't mean to. But I caused
damage, and I had to pay for it."
Young said that if she had it to do over again, she still believes going to court was the right thing to do.
"I don't know how to change. I don't know how to compromise my principles," she said.
The Youngs' recent attempts to tell their side on radio talk shows or national television have been disasters, the couple said. The two girls they sued have been overwhelmed by messages of support. But the Youngs said they have been attacked in interviews.
The Ostergaard and Zilletti families have said they feel bad that the Youngs have been harassed.
"We hope people will stop," Jill Ostergaard said.
Taylor's father, Dick Ostergaard, was scheduled to appear in court today over a restraining order he filed Feb. 4 against Herb Young for allegedly making harassing calls to the Ostergaard home.
Then, the families hope, the cookie war will be over.
Cookie plaintiffs lament bitter aftertaste,
want to tell "their side"
Denver Post, Electa Draper, February 11, 2005
Durango - Wanita "Renea" Young and her husband, Herbert, are going public with their take on reaction to the infamous cookie case.
"It's horrible. Nobody has heard our side," Herbert Young told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Renea Young, 49, successfully sued two 18-year-old Durango girls for $900 in medical expenses after they pounded on her door and dropped off a plate of homemade cookies about 10:30 p.m. on July 31.
Since The Denver Post first reported the story Feb. 4, hundreds of readers have sent messages of support to high school senior Taylor Ostergaard and college freshman Lindsey Zilletti.
The Youngs said that they have been inundated by insulting and threatening messages.
"I don't believe the girls meant for this to happen," Herbert Young said. "But they could have prevented it from happening if they had just shut their mouths when they came out of court."
The original Post story was based almost entirely on court records. The girls had declined to comment immediately following the case.
Renea Young spoke to The Post soon after the hearing, saying that she hoped the girls had learned a lesson. Both she and her husband have declined or failed to respond to repeated Denver Post requests for follow-up interviews.
Dozens of readers wrote The Post that they feared the lesson the girls learned was that it doesn't pay to be kind.
Since then, the girls have said that although burned by the court system once, they'll continue to do good deeds.
Taylor has even delivered cookies since the court ruling, although at an earlier hour, said her mother, Jill Ostergaard.
The Youngs are no strangers to court proceedings. In addition to the cookie lawsuit, records show the Youngs have sued or been sued at least nine times since 1991. Two more court actions have involved restraining orders.
Many of the suits filed by the Youngs were small claims. In 1994, Renea Young was granted a restraining order against one neighbor after they quarrelled over a shared driveway.
Another complaint was spurred by a July 4, 1997, accident in which the Youngs' pickup collided with a slow-moving hay-bale loader turning into a field as they attempted to pass it on a county road.
The case was settled out of court by an insurance company. Renea Young reported suffering neck, head and back injuries.
The Youngs have been sued by a bank, a credit company, a construction company, clients of his construction business and by one of his workers. The plaintiffs won in most instances.
Last Friday, the Ostergaards requested a temporary restraining order against Herbert Young to stop what they said were his harassing phone calls since the story broke.
Everyone chipping in to help cookie duo
Denver Post, Electa Draper, February 9, 2005
Durango - Two 18-year-old Durango friends who were sued for dropping off a plate of homemade cookies at a neighbor's porch late one summer night say they are not trying to milk this cookie deal.
But sympathy and offers keep pouring in for Lindsey Zilletti and Taylor Ostergaard from all over the country and world. A Tennessee Bible publisher wants to pay their court costs. Stand in line. A big cookie purveyor has named a cookie in their honor, "The Kindness Cookie."
Meanwhile, the woman who sued them and won about $900 Thursday in La Plata County Small Claims Court is making the media rounds, including CNN. Wanita Renea Young, 49, said the girls frightened her into an anxiety attack with their loud knocking about 10:30 p.m. July 31. She said they pounded so hard that they damaged her door.
The sheriff's deputy she called that night found no crime - no vandalism, mischief or criminal trespass - just a plate of cookies and a paper heart that said, "Have a Great Night." But Young ended up in the emergency room the next day with symptoms resembling a heart attack.
A story about the lawsuit in The Denver Post on Friday triggered hundreds of e-mails and dozens of calls from all over the world supporting Ostergaard and Zellitti. The court of public opinion reached a decision far different from Magistrate Doug Walker's.
The Post has received more than 500 e-mails from Maine to California, Australia to Canada. About 490 took the girls' side. Five were somewhat neutral. And five voiced this sentiment: 10:30 p.m. is too late to be pounding on rural doors.
Young's husband, Herb Young, told The Post on Tuesday evening that the family didn't wish to talk to the paper at this time. But Thursday, his wife said she hoped the girls had learned a lesson. Since then, she told The Associated Press that the negative response toward her has been "devastating."
David Coffee, a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, called The Post twice to get an address for the girls. The first time he tried, he had to hang up quickly to make an arrest. He called right back, although he had suffered a minor injury chasing the suspect on foot.
"I just couldn't believe this," Coffee said of the cookie controversy. "I thought that kind of stuff only happened to us when we tried to help people."
The Ostergaard and Zellitti families initially turned down offers to do some big shows such as "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Today." As exciting as those prospects were, the girls and their parents thought they should let things cool down.
"We were afraid Mr. Leno might make jokes at our neighbor's expense," said Lindsey's mother, Martha Zellitti.
"The girls don't need to go on these shows to defend themselves," said Taylor's mother, Jill Ostergaard. "Their best defense is the way they live their lives every day."
The girls regretfully declined a chance to meet football legend John Elway in Denver last weekend. Taylor, captain of Durango High School's girls basketball team, didn't think that she should leave her teammates in the lurch.
Lindsey, a freshman studying animal nutrition at a Kansas college, had a commitment to judge a livestock show.
But Taylor relented Tuesday and, from her house, did a national radio talk show with host Michael Gallagher. He said he would send cookies to soldiers in Iraq in the girls' names, Jill Ostergaard said.
"It's been overwhelming," Taylor said as she juggled afternoon interviews with The Post and a local food writer seeking her cookie recipes. "But it's been good overall."
Cookie giant Otis Spunkmeyer, which honors the girls with its "Kindness Cookie," also has promised the girls countertop ovens and a year's supply of dough.
The girls will visit Denver on Thursday to accept $900 from 850-KOA Radio, which has raised about $4,000 in their names since Saturday, spokesman Alan Jackson said. The rest of the proceeds will be donated to the Never Forgotten Fund, a charity in honor of Columbine High School shooting victims.
Father In Cookie Lawsuit Gets Restraining Order
TRO Is Latest In Rural Saga Involving Cookies Left On Porch
Denver Channel 7 News, February 7, 2005
The father of a Durango, Colo., teenager, who was sued for leaving cookies on a neighbor's porch, now has a restraining order against the husband of the woman who filed suit.
Richard Ostergaard obtained the temporary restraining order because he said Wanita Young's husband, Herb Young, continues to call his home and harass his family.
It's the latest installment in a rural soap opera that could be called "How The Cookie Crumbles."
Wanita Young won a $930 judgment against two girls who left cookies on her doorstep last summer, claiming the incident gave her an anxiety attack, which required medical care.
Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zellitti's story has garnered nationwide attention and the girls were in New York City over the weekend, appearing on the weekend edition of ABC's "Good Morning America."
The incident began last July when Ostergaard and Zellitti decided to skip a local teen dance and bake a batch of chocolate chip cookies for their nine rural neighbors. They left the cookies, along with anonymous notes, on the front porches of their neighbors. They thought it would be a nice gesture and knocked on the doors before running away to make certain someone found the cookies before any wild animals did.
Wanita Young told the Durango Herald that the incident frightened her.
"We heard this horrible banging on the door, like someone was trying to break it down," she told the newspaper. "I ran upstairs and called out 'Who's there?' three or four times. But no one answered me and when I looked out the window, there weren't any vehicles in sight. But I could see the silhouette of someone on the other side of the window. I got really scared and called the sheriff's department."
Three sheriff's deputies arrived and found the cookies along with a note that read: "Have a great night. Love, The T and L Club." The "T and L Club" stood for Taylor and Lindsey.
The deputies didn't know what the note meant and suggested the Young stay in a motel that night. Young's husband was out of town so she took her 86-year-old mother and 19-year-old daughter to her sister's house in Farmington, N.M.
"Driving down there, I was throwing up and feeling a lot of pressure in my chest," she told the Herald. "I thought I might be having a heart attack."
Young, 49, went to a medical center emergency room the next morning and her hospital bill was more than $1,400. Doctors diagnosed her problem as an anxiety attack.
Young said she was assaulted by one of her neighbors 15 years ago and thought the cookie incident might be related to that.
Young is a cashier at Wal-Mart and has been director of the Durango Food Bank since 1990. Ostergaard is a senior at Durango High School, and Zellitti, is a freshman at Colby College in Kansas.
Denver radio station KOA raised more than $1,900 from listeners Friday to pay the court fine levied against the two girls. The remainder of the money will go to a charity dedicated to victims of the Columbine High School shootings.
Young said her phone hasn't stopped ringing and her life has been threatened.
"I'll probably have to move out of town," she said.
A hearing is scheduled on Feb. 17 to determine if the temporary restraining order against Herb Young should be made permanent.
Outraged readers say cookie ruling was half-baked
After a crumby ending, donated dough rolls in for 2 cookie deliverers
Denver Post, Electa Draper, February 6, 2005
Durango - The Cookie Defense Fund has swelled to thousands of dollars.
Hundreds of Denver Post readers e-mailed and called to express "shock" and "outrage" that two 18-year-old Durango girls were sued for something they did last summer: drop off a plate of cookies and a paper heart on a neighbor's porch.
On that warm July 31 night, the pair, Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zellitti, decided to skip a dance and, instead, bake cookies for neighbors. They knocked on doors, dropped off the cookies along with heart-shaped wishes that recipients "have a great night," then ran away.
But when they rapped on one woman's door, it turned out to be a knock heard 'round the world.
The woman said the pounding about 10:30 p.m. frightened her into an anxiety attack. A Durango judge Thursday awarded about $900 to the 49-year-old woman to cover some medical bills incurred when she ended up at the emergency room the next day.
Since the story was published Friday in The Denver Post, the attention has been overwhelming.
If the people who called and wrote make good on their pledges, the $900 court award will be recovered many times over. Several people offered to personally cover the whole amount themselves.
The story was linked to the Drudge Report and eBay. It was recounted on CNN, MSNBC ("Sugar and spice is not always nice," journalist Dan Abrams said) and other media.
The girls appeared Saturday morning on "Good Morning America."
"They just thought it might be their one shot to tell the country they're still not afraid to do good deeds," said Lindsey's mom, Martha Zellitti. "They'll just try to be more considerate in the future about the time."
The families are also mulling an offer from Jay Leno to do "The Tonight Show." It's not looking good for Leno, though, because Lindsey's mom wants her to get back to college in Kansas, where she is a freshman studying animal nutrition. Taylor is still in high school.
"We're just not the movie- star types," Martha Zellitti said.
Meanwhile, the Otis Spunkmeyer cookie-making company is offering to hold an event in Durango to set things right.
"Cookies are the ultimate comfort food," spokeswoman Liz Rayo said. "We don't want anyone sued over cookies. Cookies are good. This is an emotional issue for us."
They're not the only ones.
In e-mail after e-mail to The Post, from Hawaii to New York, and from Canada to Puerto Rico, people invoked with dismay the adage "No good deed goes unpunished."
Many observed that the unfortunate misunderstanding gave new meaning to the term "Cookie Monster."
One reader called the plaintiff in the case "a macaroon." Another called her a "cookie batterer."
The plaintiff could not be reached for comment Friday.
Martha Zellitti said the girls' families are not upset with the neighbor, or with the judge, who received many calls from people questioning his decision. Zellitti said the neighbor volunteers at the local food bank and does good deeds herself.
"And the judge made the best decision he could with the information he had," Zellitti said. "We just weren't prepared."
The judge awarded only $1 for damages, even though he could have given the plaintiff lost wages and the cost of new motion- sensor lights for her porch and more. She had itemized about $3,000 in all.
But political conservatives who read the story were convinced the judge must be a liberal activist intent on being politically correct. On the other hand, liberals said the judge and neighbor must be conservatives, who tend to see "terrorists behind every bush and on every porch," even in a quiet rural neighborhood just south of Durango.
Many e-mailers from Texas passed this off as "those crazy Coloradans." Several e-mailers from Canada chocked it up to "crazy Americans."
The girls' defenders ran the gamut from executives and ministers to felons. One out of hundreds of e-mails criticized the girls' actions. One e-mailer offered to set the girls up in their own cookie business.
There were other factions. A small but intense group was incensed that anyone would consider 10:30 p.m. "too late." It's really early, they said.
One church group wrote that members were very concerned because one of its favorite programs is for youths to ring doorbells, drop off treats and run. Another church group in South Carolina said it had young men in its congregation who would like to correspond with the Durango bakers.
"Lindsey's boyfriend wouldn't like that," Martha Zellitti said.
Cookie klatch lands girls in court
Denver Post, Electa Draper, February 4, 2005
Durango
- Two teenage girls decided one summer's evening to skip a dance where there
might be cursing and drinking to stay home and bake cookies for their neighbors.
Big mistake.
They were sued, successfully, for an unauthorized cookie drop on one porch.
The July 31 deliveries consisted of half a dozen chocolate-chip and sugar cookies accompanied by big hearts cut out of red or pink construction paper with the message: "Have a great night."
The notes were signed, "Love, The T and L Club," code for Taylor Ostergaard, then 17, and Lindsey Jo Zellitti, 18.
Inside one of the nine scattered rural homes south of Durango that got cookies that night, a 49-year-old woman became so terrified by the knocks on her door around 10:30 p.m. that she called the sheriff's department. Deputies determined that no crime had been committed.
But Wanita Renea Young ended up in the hospital emergency room the next day after suffering a severe anxiety attack she thought might be a heart attack.
A Durango judge Thursday awarded Young almost $900 to recoup her medical bills. She received nothing for pain and suffering.
"The victory wasn't sweet," Young said Thursday afternoon. "I'm not gloating about it. I just hope the girls learned a lesson."
Taylor's mother, Jill Ostergaard, said her daughter "cried and cried" after Judge Doug Walker handed down his decision in La Plata County Small Claims Court.
"She felt she was being punished for doing something nice," Jill Ostergaard said.
The judge said that he didn't think the girls acted maliciously but that it was pretty late at night for them to be out. He didn't award any punitive damages.
Taylor and Lindsey declined to comment Thursday, saying only that they didn't want to say anything hurtful.
Young said the girls showed "very poor judgment."
But Taylor had asked her father's permission to bake cookies for the neighbors after livestock-tending chores were done.
"I said, 'Go ahead, as long as I get some cookies,"' Richard Ostergaard said Thursday.
Just as dusk arrived a little after 9 p.m., Taylor and Lindsey began their mad spree. They didn't stop at houses that were dark. But where lights shone, the girls figured people were awake and in need of cookies. A kitchen light was on at Young's home.
Court records contain half a dozen letters from neighbors who said that they enjoyed the unexpected treats.
The cookies were good. It was a nice surprise. They weren't scared.
But Young, home with her own 18-year-old daughter and her elderly mother, said she saw shadowy figures who banged and banged at her door. When she called out, "Who's there?" no one answered. The figures ran off.
She thought perhaps they were burglars or some neighbors she had tangled with in the past, she said.
"We just wanted to surprise them," Taylor said.
Young left her home that night to stay at her sister's, but her symptoms, including shaking and an upset stomach, wouldn't subside. The next morning she went to Mercy Medical Center.
"We feel that knocking on a door and leaving cookies is a gesture of kindness and would not create an anxiety attack in the general public," Taylor's parents wrote to the court.
The girls wrote letters of apology to Young. Taylor's letter, written a few days after the episode, said in part: "I didn't realize this would cause trouble for you. ... I just wanted you to know that someone cared about you and your family."
The families had offered to pay Young's medical bills if she would agree to indemnify the families against future claims.
Young wouldn't sign the agreement. She said the families' apologies rang false and weren't delivered in person. The matter went to court.
Young said she believes that the girls should not have been running from door to door late at night.
"Something bad could have happened to them," she said.