Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 19, 1992 TAG: 9202190350
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CALLS FOR HELP CHILL RECEIVER
They haven't been harassing or threatening or annoying, but the phone calls Sue Meredith has been getting this month sure have been unsettling.They began on the first of the month, a Saturday. Meredith was at home in Roanoke County.
She answered her phone and listened to a woman - apparently elderly, her voice thickly accented - blurt a rambling plea for help. She wanted to talk to Sue Childress.
Sue Meredith knows no Sue Childress, and she tried to tell that to the woman. It was no use. The old, obviously deeply pained, woman said she was sick, and wanted to talk to Sue Childress. She wouldn't be deterred.
Twice more she would call that day.
"I tried to tell her she had the wrong number, but it was like she couldn't hear what I was saying. Or she wouldn't hear it," said Meredith.
That night, when Meredith was out, the caller left a long message on her answering tape.
"Sue? Sue Childress? I am very, very sick. I need your help. I am here in town," she pleaded.
She never left a name or an address, though she recited Meredith's phone number perfectly. It's been Meredith's number for 27 years.
Just as quickly as Sue Meredith instinctively decided the calls were not a hoax, they stopped.
A week passed, and she tried to forget them, though that wasn't easy. A sick elderly woman crying to you - even if by mistake - is a tough thing to put out of your mind.
And then, on a Monday afternoon, another long message from the exasperated woman, her voice at times growing faint:
"Please, please ma'am, let me talk to Susan. Oh my God, please, let me talk to Susan, please. Is Susan there? Susan Childress? Please let me talk to her, I am very sick . . . I am very ill, I cannot even respond from bed. Susan Childress, please talk to me . . . "
There is at least one Sue Childress in Roanoke. She's a deputy at the city sheriff's department.
She's as boggled by the calls as is Suzanne Meredith.
Childress did receive an anonymous card, a couple of months ago, advising her that her "friend" would be visiting. She still doesn't know who it was from.
She got an unsigned Valentine's Day card, too. Her mom not long ago went to a card reader near her home in Pennsylvania.
Those are the curious sorts of personal mysterettes that seem, at one time or another, to envelop us all. Rarely do they amount to anything. Almost never can we link them to one another.
We write them off as random slings of fate, as Sue Childress has.
Childress, who does not know Sue Meredith, does not recognize the voice on the tape.
She's intrigued, too, by the small drama being played out on Meredith's answering machine. But Sue Childress says her only link is a common name.
Last week came another call to Meredith's home, again from the elderly woman, again asking to speak with Sue Childress.
"It's a little upsetting," said Meredith. "You can't go to police. You can't go to social services. But you want to help."