Timeline

It would have been easier to assemble a specific timeline a year ago, but at the time our mother died we assumed that this was a weird fluke, not the result of a deadly ongoing policy. We were taking care of the logistics and grieving, not planning to go public.

Adam has many of our mother’s records, including some downloaded from her APS account. Between those, old messages, and other resources, we have been assembling a picture of how things happened.

The electric bill

We know our mother had the money to pay her electric bill to Arizona Public Service; all of her other bills were paid up. We believe that she did not know that the autopay process was broken, and therefore did not realize that she had an outstanding balance; this explains why she did not reach out to APS, to us, or to anyone else for help.

• May 2023 — A bill shows that an autopay payment failed.

• August 2023 — Two failed payments evidently broke autopay

• August - December 2023 — Without autopay working, a past due balance builds up.

• January 2024 — She made a payment of about $1,100, covering her full balance. But autopay remained inactive.

• February - April 2024 — Without autopay working, she develops another mounting past due balance. The billing information emails from January through April do not mention a past due balance.

• APS has said publicly that they tried to contact her “10 times through email, phone, a physical door hanger and monthly bills”. We later received an email from the Arizona Corporation Commission describing what APS told them about those messages:

  • 1 May — APS report doing a single phone call using their “automated phone system (IVR)”. Our mother’s APS account shows two phone numbers for her with 202 & 703 area codes. She moved to Arizona from Washington DC, so those are old numbers she must have used when first getting set up. She used a cellphone with an Arizona 623 area code, so any phone calls they made must not have reached her. Presumably the robot could not identify that the call did not even reach her voicemail.

  • 8 May — They report leaving a doorhanger. We did not spot it going through our mother’s house after her death.

  • They confirm our suspicion that our mother only received bill notices in email.

• Adam is pretty sure our mother had not opened these last few emails when he got into her account after her death:

  • 30 April — notifying her about her 23 April bill; this is the first email which says “Past Due”

  • 8 May — this is the first email to say “Disconnect Notice”; it also mentions that “we left a notice at your place of residence”; according to APS, they left a doorhanger that day.

  • 9 May — says “Final Notice”

  • 14 May — the day after the shutoff — “Please pay your past-due balance of $423.18 to have your service turned back on”

• 13 May — APS shut off her electricity with 18 days to spare before regulations would prevent them from cutting her off during the summer.

• 16 May — APS enacts a moratorium on disconnects.

• 21 May — We paid the full balance of $586 when reconnecting her power after her death.

Our letter to the Arizona Corporation Commission sent on 9 May 2025 describes this in even greater detail.

Her death

On 13 May, APS cut off her power, when the high in Sun City West was 99°F.

It had been a couple of weeks since either of us had spoken to her, which was only a little unusual; we were erratic correspondents, with times when we would talk every day or three, then drop out of touch for a few weeks. Jonathan spent the week of the 13th-17th preöccupied with a work trip.

On 14 May, the high temperature was again 99°.

On 15 May, the high temperature was 97°.

On 16 May, the high temperature was again 97°.

On 17 May, the high temperature hit 102°.

A neighbor who had a key visited our mother’s house, was surprised that she did not answer the doorbell, noticed that the weekly newspaper delivered on the 16th was still on the porch, and used her key to go in. With the lights out, she did not see our mother.

The Medical Examiner’s report does not speculate about our mother’s time of death, but we strongly suspect that she had already died a few days earlier. Heat kills fast and catches people by surprise.

On 18 May, the high temperature was 101°.

On 19 May, Jonathan got a message in the middle of the day from a friend of our mother: she had missed their usual weekly breakfast. He devoted most of the rest of the day to detective work:

• Tracking down the neighbor with a key to our mother’s house, and learning about that visit on the 17th.

• Dispatching the Sun City Posse for a wellness check. They met up with the friend with a key. They had a policy of not going into the house, but the friend did and again did not find our mother! The Posse reported the house smelling like cigarettes but not like Dead Person.

• Escalating to contacting the Sheriff, to have them issue a Missing Persons.

• The Sheriff entered her house late that evening, and did find her.