MY LIFE AS A HORROR MOVIE: Rebuttal to 3-Day-or-Quit
Note: i’m going Lenny Bruce and publishing all i can about what i’m going through as a result of Helen Simone Bailey and Citywide Property. I don’t want them in my head and yet here they are. This is for anyone doing research on either one so you know to beware. My privacy? Ha! Long gone as it is. –Erika
Remember: AVOID HELEN SIMONE BAILEY (she goes by Simone)… this is what she looks like when tearing wings off pretty little doves
Rebuttals to “3-Day-Notice” / Unlawful Detainer Case # CUD-24-674683
And text of Lincoln Shaw/Citywide Property’s
Attorney, David Wasserman’s claims as
served to Erika Lopez 1381 B Hampshire St/SF 94110 …. e@ErikaLopez.com
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ORIGINAL QUOTES (top of page 2 of “3-Day-or-Quit”):
“The nuisance activity, which is creating substantial interference with the comfort and enjoyment of other building residents and is continuing and recurring in nature, is as follows:
“On Friday afternoon of March 15, 2024, Tenant Erika Lopez violently kicked in the door of [Helen] Simone Bailey, an elderly long-term tenant across the hall in Unit 1381A. Simone called SFPD and then called Andre Moreno, the property management company’s maintenance person. When Andre arrived at Hampshire Street, Erika Lopez was in handcuffs and appeared to be resisting the officers and shouting at the neighbors. Upon Ms. Lopez’s release from custody on or about March 18, 2024, she began verbally accosting Simone Bailey again.”
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- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “Friday afternoon of March 15, 2024” TRUTH: This is the one statement here that is actually TRUE and indisputable. And what an Ides of March it was. Like a creepy horror movie that won’t end.
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “Tenant Erika Lopez violently kicked in the door of Simone Bailey” TRUTH: Helen “Simone” Bailey, in the her own sworn and signed statement in her Protective Order against me [Temporary Restraining Order Case # CCH-24-586669: “Attachment 7a(3)-Descrive {sic} Harassment”; page 1 of 9): “Erika Lopez broke down the door of my apartment. She did this by ramming her body into my apartment door. In the process, she broke the lock and the surrounding wood.”
I did not “kick in” or even “break down” Simone’s door. With two arthritic knees, one I can no longer even stand on, I’m not physically capable. I’d placed my foot in the threshold and in the struggle for me to get her to listen to me about James’ serious condition, I heard the door panel creak, and that’s what I thought she meant by me breaking her door and I casually admitted as much to the police. However, by the time Andre Moreno and Citywide got involved, that claim metastasized into me breaking down, and even eventually karate kicking Simone’s door open.
In the couple of decades Simone has lived here, I have never hurt or touched her, while from the beginning she had gotten drunk and had a fight with our box fan (she replaced it) and we’ve had her subletters get drunk and try and break into our apartment or go through our closet and use our vacuum cleaner. We’ve had to change the locks to protect ourselves from the furious subletters she’d bilked out of thousands of dollars of deposits.
I am terrified of Helen Simone Bailey in a way that no court order can protect me or James or my family and life from her. Ever since she first moved here, I’ve only ever tried to take her under my wing as the elder artist, but she doesn’t think like that. I know enough about how Simone thinks, what she’s taken from others and has done to people, I know how she hates not just white people but I think she’s an equal opportunity hater. I have seen her lose more and more friends until she has none, and just is alone in her hoarding apartment where she yells at people on the phone and obsesses about doing evil to James and me as we hobbled through life. She’s more apt to slice up an opponent and store them in the freezer. That’s why I fear Helen Simone Bailey in a way no one can ameliorate, and haven’t knocked on her door for over 13 years… until James’ safety and life was on the line.
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “Simone Bailey, an elderly long-term tenant across the hall in Unit 1381A” TRUTH: Simone is actually the youngest on this floor at age 41; I’m 56 and will be 57 soon; but it is James Swanson, my partner of 26 years, who was actually the one true “elderly long-term tenant” of our building at age 58. He was severely sick with metastatic stage 4 melanoma and brain cancer. He’d also had brain surgery and a long scar down the back of his skull and was vulnerable to hitting his head when unstable. Unable to walk, drink, or eat without help and unable to keep food, water, or his medication down, I had to feed him little bites every 15-20 minutes to keep him from vomiting up his medication.
By Friday, March 15th, he was able to keep a little food and his meds down, but was still fragile and falling from brain swelling which impaired his motor skills as well as reasoning. Even with a cane he’d fall forward on his face or get perilously close to hitting his skull without help, so I made him promise to not get up for absolutely anything until I returned with his medication from the pharmacy at the corner.
In the 20 minutes I was gone, Simone had been banging on our door over and over until James, fearing an emergency, struggled to get up and answer her. He’d fallen down on the way there and opened the door from the floor. Quoting from Simone’s Protective Order against me: “I knocked on Lopez’ apartment door to ask them to move the bicycle. No one answered. I knocked again. No one came to the door….the door to Lopez’s apartment opened. Her partner was sitting on the floor when he opened the door. When I saw him—because I know he is struggling with brain cancer—I apologized for disturbing him and told him the bike was in the hallway so I put it on the rack. He told me Erika had left it there, then I went back into my apartment.”
When I returned from the pharmacy, I found James crawling on the living room floor, trying to climb back up onto the sofa. When I asked what happened because he’d promised to stay put while I was gone, James explained Simone had kept on banging on the door and he thought it might be an emergency. He said he’d fallen on the way to answering the door, and I asked if she helped him back up. James said, “No, she asked me to move my bicycle and I asked her to do it for me because you must’ve forgotten on the way to Walgreen’s.”
I realized that if she saw James answer the door from the floor and instead of offering to help him up, she simply continued to complain about his bicycle being left off the rack, I had to actually talk to her because Simone has a talent and skill for escalating solvable issues into…well, the cops taking me to jail, James and the kitties being left to starve for almost 5 days, and eventually hastening James’ death.
See, a year earlier Simone had backed into James’ motorcycle parked in front of our driveway, and simply left it tipped over on the street, and drove off. Later when James said hello, she kept a straight face and said nothing about it to him. Luckily, a meter maid had gotten her license plate number. We never suspected her, so when the insurance company told us it was her and when James politely confronted her about it, she conveniently blamed her fear of me on why she never admitted it. Then she simply had her grandmother’s insurance cover the almost $4k bill, which totaled his motorcycle.
After seeing how she’d casually evict multiple vulnerable subletters staying in her apartment from halfway around the world because she simply wanted to leave her rent-controlled NYC apartment and return to her rent-controlled SF apartment, she’d keep the subletters’ deposits and we’d have to change our locks because they’d be so enraged from being completely screwed, I knew she has no honor or integrity and thus I had to talk to her face-to-face. No notes or emails would cover James’ safety from Simone’s sadistic self-absorption. Lo!—No Restraining Orders would’ve saved him or me from Simone’s sadistic self-absorption, either.
She has no empathy and this could go too far (as it in fact very much has).
In 2016, when I said I wasn’t going to cover for her with the landlord anymore about her subletting, she said, “Fuck you and your honor!” And soon after that was when she apparently first got the idea to get a restraining order against me as retaliation. Again: I have evidence of all this.
So I knew that if James’ answering the door from the floor wasn’t enough to incite empathy about his actual physical inability to move his own bicycle, I had to stop avoiding her and had to personally ask her to be more sensitive. I had to explain that this wasn’t the same James who’d been mountain biking one week earlier; he was declining fast and I needed her to not bother him and have me handle any problems she had with any inconveniences from our existence.
I had no idea that knocking on her door was a trap she’d been waiting for and would lead to my eventual ambush and our family’s take down.
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “Simone called SFPD and then called Andre Moreno, the property management company’s maintenance person.” TRUTH: Maybe the SFPD did get called first and decided to take an hour to respond; but after I’d tried to tell her how sick James was and to only come to me about problems and leave him alone, and after Simone immediately screamed, when she’s not a screamer, and tried to slam the door in my confused face and had pushed me against the wall, and I retreated into my apartment to reconnoiter and cry from my failure—almost immediately, within 15 minutes I heard someone in the hallway making the loud cracking sounds of wood being split with a crowbar, followed by a power drill.
Worried Simone was barricading me into my apartment, I looked out my peep hole and saw Andre Moreno himself working on Simone’s door. It was apparently an opportune time to pry out her old deadbolt from the door frame with a crowbar, photograph the deadbolt hardware, and conveniently frame me—“Tenant Erika Lopez”—as the one with one arthritic legs and cane, who’d just “violently kicked in the door of Simone Bailey.”
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “When Andre arrived at Hampshire Street, Erika Lopez was in handcuffs and appeared to be resisting the officers and shouting at the neighbors.” TRUTH: Again, Andre Moreno had arrived about a good full hour to set up the scene before they called the police. Andre’s physical presence was the only reason I’d waited until his power tools paused so that I could try again to go back and talk to Simone about James’ health without her instantly screaming and escalating again. I needed her to understand how severely ill James was, as my only goal was to protect him, heal him.
Unless Andre ran off to the hardware store, as he has before, and returned when the police had arrived, the police cameras and other witnesses in the crowd of police on the staircase will corroborate my contention that he wasn’t so hapless; he was there before anyone else.
So why lie about a seemingly insignificant unimportant detail? Perhaps to distract from Citywide Property’s obedient and loyal maintenance man “pet” who had the ability and opportunity to rip out Simone’s deadbolt lock himself? His awe of wealthy landlords and his eagerness to faithfully serve and please his masters tells me that he was also likely the one to liase between Simone and Citywide on this fortuitous opportunity to finally collude with Simone and evict me, the longest rent-controlled tenant here (30 years), and triple—or even quadruple— their rent with a fresh tenant.
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “When Andre arrived…Erika Lopez was in handcuffs and appeared to be resisting the officers and shouting at the neighbors.” TRUTH: When the sounds of power tools stopped, I went into the hallway to find Simone and Andre, but they weren’t at her apartment. The very moment I opened the front door to the outside, Officer Keppler (Star #2196) instantly lunged forward, grabbed my arm, whirled me around, and I was instantly handcuffed.
Officer Mooney (Star #2453), swooped in front of me and immediately read me my rights, placing me under arrest. I was in such shock, I couldn’t believe what was actually happening, but had to only think of James. It is on all the present officers’ cameras that I repeatedly said, “Do what you want with me I’m only worried about James!”
I had no time to physically “resist” and the “shouting at the neighbors” part was when I was being dragged away to jail for what the officers said could possibly be as long as 4-5 days—as weekends apparently don’t count towards the 72-maximum hold time—and I was desperately screaming for another elderly and handicapped next-door neighbor, Rudy San Juan at 1371 Hampshire—or any neighbors within earshot—to check or keep an eye on James. I knew he would likely die once left alone so I just needed someone to know he existed and had been completely neglected to die worse than a dog. Dogs are kings in San Francisco, while white men are now treated as lowest of the low. (Yes, Simone is racist against white people and says she cannot even tell them apart…yes; I’ve got evidence.)
A few days later, early on Sunday morning of March 17, one of the neighbors who used to also ruthlessly sublet, they’re the ones upstairs who’d heard my desperate last hail-Mary “shouting at the neighbors” plea to check on James, actually checked on James and made an anonymous wellness call when he didn’t respond on Sunday, March 17th, while I was still in jail.
The paramedics found James face down, unresponsive, and covered in his own urine and feces. He had bruises, cuts, and slashes all over his body from being let alone and trying to get around the apartment by himself all weekend.
He was taken to the ICU at San Francisco General Hospital.
- DAVID WASSERMAN STATES: “Upon Ms. Lopez’s release from custody on or about March 18, 2024, she began verbally accosting Simone Bailey again.” TRUTH: I’d been taken to jail Friday afternoon in my house clothes and no keys, with the apartment stove left on. I was let out of jail 4-1/2 days later after 11pm. When I got home and saw the condition of my home with the windows wide open and things toppled over from the paramedics breaking in, and broken glass and dishes, feces, blood, vomit, urine, and trash strewn everywhere while James in the ICU, and the kitties were too afraid to come out (I thought one was dead), I sobbed cried screamed in agony and despair at the horror movie my life had become (and continues to be as of this moment).
So Simone immediately called the SFPD on me around midnight, as soon as I was home and they kept banging on my door as I cried in agony and tried to clean up best I could. This time I refused to open my door as I cleaned the mess and told the cops they’d ruined my family’s life.
In the hospital James faded quickly. He was completely bed-bound and unable to walk at all by the time he was admitted into the ICU. He talked and opened his eyes less and less every day. James was the one who told me that Hector upstairs checked on him and that when the SFFD came to do a wellness check the first day I was taken to jail, they came up the back steps and yelled, “James! Turn off the stove!” And they left him to fall and crawl over to the stove to turn it off himself.
He thought they’d done a horrible job by not going inside and checking on his capacity to take care of himself.
The very next morning after I was home, I went to the hospital to feed and sit with him all day, and at night I rushed home to clean the urine out of the sofa cushions, pillows, and blankets during the wettest time of year and things took weeks to dry, if they ever did.
In all that time I was getting served and visits from the police even though I was too busy at the hospital and cleaning my apartment to lurk around bothering her. I wanted so much less of Simone; not more.
Twenty days later, on April 4 at 5:55am, James died after being home as a hospice patient only a few hours.
At 7:00am, as I was sitting beside James’ body, mourning, a process server banged on our door. I did not answer. An hour after that at 8:00am, Melissa, the hospice nurse arrived to officially verify James’ death. Then for some reason, Simone once again called the SFPD, and so for the next couple of hours the police and Simone would hang out in the hallway and bang on our door, yelling for me to answer. Again, I did not dare answer the door. I lit incense, put on music, and sobbed by James’ body.
But Melissa the nurse, dared to identify herself and talk to the cops through the door, and even she got afraid of their bullying and soon slipped out the back door to avoid them.
I cannot help but feel James and I have been harassed and hounded because he was terminally ill and because I am even more infirm as a result of being the only one to take physical care of him for the 9 months I’d been preoccupied with caring for him full time. My knees were already bad and it was harder and harder to hide my limp (I don’t want to look vulnerable for good reason…look at what it has wrought me!).
My one leg is so bad that even with a cane it is has been nearly physically impossible to hobble to the courthouse to deal with the sudden avalanche of false charges levied against me, and for that I’m grateful for the legal help I’ve been getting from friends, family, professional colleagues, and finally The Eviction Defense Collaborative.
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Helen “Simone” Bailey of 1381 A Hampshire Street San Francisco: The Creepy Black Kathy Bates or Glenn Close