Gracious Teen Girls Sued By Cranky Neighbor
After a crumby ending, donated dough rolls in 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."
WANT TO HELP? The families say the girls' court costs are covered, but people who still want to donate can designate that the money be used for the girls' college funds or for the "Never Forgotten" scholarship fund for Columbine students. The families set up this address for mail and donations: Taylor Ostergaard and Lindsey Zellitti, P.O. Box 2528, Durango, CO 81301.
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.
Staff writer Electa Draper can
Bookmarks