I don't talk to sis a whole lot just to gab, and like I said, I couldn't really call her up b/c she doesn't really know I posted here.
But.....I did see her yesterday for a belated Christmas celebration, so I got the scoop (what there is of it).
BIL talked to the minister and explained the situation and what happened, and he said "That's just not right." So the big guy knows about it, who was involved and what happened. AND he agrees that it was a shady thing to do.
However, they didn't want to really go ballistic about it, and sis said that the minister lost two of his office people recently, so they're hurting for workers. When they're short on manpower, sis didn't really want to give them more work by harping on this. However, she did say something about possibly following up and making sure that Turkey Lady didn't get a receipt or paperwork for the supposed donation for tax purposes, since those would be sent out around this time of the year. I encouraged her to just give a quick call to the minister/office and remind them of this incident so Turkey Lady wouldn't get hers.
I did get some more information on a few things that were cloudy. The info that sis got from the auction was a duplicate receipt from the deli that said something like "Deli items" in the amount of $50. Turkey Lady presumably had the original receipt. A turkey dinner was not specified on the receipt, but was on another note with the receipt, handwritten, that said that it was good for a turkey dinner and had the handwritten expiration date. **There was NO expiration date from the deli itself.** So the turkey lady did indeed 'issue' the so-called expiration date, and when she issued it, she sort of directed that the thing would be used for a turkey dinner. I confirmed with Sis that presumably, she could have chosen anything from the deli, since a turkey dinner was not directly specified on the actual receipt. Also, that's why Sis thought that it wouldn't be a huge problem to pick it up on Friday (no expiration date from the deli, only from the handwritten note).
Sis said that turkey lady kept calling on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, asking if the dinner had been picked up, and showed up Wednesday night to redeem it herself. Sis called on Friday, and talked to the very confused deli manager, who said that they normally do gift cards for donations; then people can get what they want, when they want. Sis had to go through the whole explanation of this fiasco b/c the deli manager just did not understand; he said that for donations, they just use a gift card. That's how they came to the conclusion that Turkey Lady planned it like this; to 'donate' the item, but hedge her bet that it wouldn't be redeemed by her self-imposed 'expiration' date so she could redeem it herself. If she'd just donated a gift card, she wouldn't be able to redeem it herself.
So while it doesn't appear that Sis or BIL are out to publicly hunt down Turkey Lady, they certainly don't want her to get away with this either. She mentioned that they were probably going to just chalk it up to a church donation. BUT, she mentioned talking with the auction coordinator before the next auction and making it clear what Turkey Lady did, so they hopefully won't accept any more 'donations' from her.
So it's probably not the update the people had hoped for, but at least they did do *something* in talking to the minister. The Turkey Lady's name was on the handwritten note, so they know who it was by name, but Sis doesn't know the lady personally. She's obviously not one of the pillars of the church community.
If I find out anything else, I'll let you all know.
