Houston Press, TX
May 14 2004
The End Game
A widow just wanted her home. But that was asking too much.
BY SARAH FENSKE
Strangers are inside Rose Sanjakian’s A-frame house in West
University, touching her belongings. They paw through boxes of
scarves and hankies, examine the purses strewn across the bed and
scavenge within the closets. Always a lady, Sanjakian owned more than
two dozen pairs of prim white gloves, now available at the low price
of $2 each.
The house is packed with items. There’s an old Victrola, two
television sets and a dressmaker’s dummy. Painted china lines the
cupboards, piles up in the drawers and covers the table. A stack of
Better Homes & Gardens from the 1970s is wedged between an endless
supply of tchotchkes and knickknacks on the floor.
The strangers are mostly unimpressed. “Where’s the good stuff?” one
man asks plaintively. Another eyes the house. “It’s really very
solidly built,” she says.
Nearly 40 years after Sanjakian and her husband bought it, the house
is for sale. So is the vanity set with its hand-painted pink roses,
the big bottle of Jean Naté bath splash, the box of Depends.
Sanjakian kept things obsessively, hoarding them until they filled
every room. But she no longer lives here, and soon, none of this will
be hers. First the estate sale, then the house sale; her life is
winding down just like that old Victrola.
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The final chapter of Rose Sanjakian’s life started with her husband’s
death nearly three years ago. A Turkish-born Armenian, Sanjakian told
people she’d grown up in an Istanbul orphanage and come to the United
States as a 12-year-old bride. No one knows if that’s precisely true
or exactly how old she is: Various forms of ID put her age anywhere
from 69 to 97.
Once she was in America, her first husband died, and so did a
stepdaughter. Sanjakian was living in Michigan when she met Mike
Sanjakian, another Armenian. They came to Texas together.
Hawking raffle tickets, Sanjakian organized the effort to purchase
land for Houston’s St. Kevork Armenian Church. “She was a social
butterfly,” says Rose Berberian, her goddaughter. “They were always
having parties in their home.”
The couple had plenty of godchildren, but no children of their own.
And Rose Sanjakian left the church in a huff, Berberian says. When
98-year-old Mike died in August 2001, she was alone.
“He had taken care of everything,” Berberian says. “She had no clue.”
The home, already one of the oldest on a gentrifying block of Belmont
Street, suddenly seemed to sag. The City of West University sent
Sanjakian a letter ordering her to repair the ramshackle garage. (She
responded by calling the city’s code-enforcement officer and
shrieking into his voice mail.) She couldn’t remember to pay her
bills, and she began to pester her neighbors. Her gas had been shut
off, she told them. Could she use theirs? She’d shuffle over to
Randalls and struggle with paying by check; sometimes she’d sign her
name, then ask a stranger to fill in the rest.
Last September, an anonymous letter arrived at Harris County Probate
Court. “She stops total strangers, walking by her house, to attend to
small chores such as changing a light bulb, fixing a light socket,
looking for batteries, chasing her pet parakeet, or taking her to the
bank,” the letter says. “Yet she will not allow people of authority
access to her home, depending on the time of day. Her garage roof
collapsed on top of her car, several years ago, yet she continues to
go into the garage to wash clothes, ignoring all warnings pertaining
to safety.”
A court investigator confirmed the information, and a physician
concluded that Sanjakian suffered from “mild dementia” and paranoia.
Her home was dirty, her clothes torn and her judgment impaired, he
wrote. Appointed by the court, attorney Suzanne Kornblit found that
Sanjakian had no relatives, but had two friends willing to serve as
her guardian: her goddaughter, Berberian, and a neighbor, Jackie
Green.
Both say they wanted to keep Sanjakian out of a nursing home. “She
wanted to die in that house,” says Green, a special education
teacher. “She told me she’d promised her husband not to trust
anybody, because they’d get her out of the house.”
It meant even more to Berberian. Half Armenian, she holds that
community’s belief that it should take care of its own. “Since she
didn’t have any grandchildren of her own, I thought she could live
with me,” she says.
But Berberian was working as a purchasing manager and finishing
courses for her MBA; she hardly had enough time to take on the
administrative responsibilities, much less care for Sanjakian full
time. She thought she could hire nurses.
Probate Judge Mike Wood wanted something more concrete. He rejected
pleas from Berberian and her parents and appointed Green as the
guardian.
To Berberian, it seemed dreadfully unfair. She’d known Sanjakian all
her life. “I’m the closest thing she has to family — and they give
it to a stranger? A neighbor!” She tearfully blames herself for not
acting sooner and not applying for guardianship herself before a
neighbor got involved.
Green says she didn’t even want the guardianship. She applied only
because she worried Berberian was too “flaky” and she didn’t want to
have her neighbor’s affairs managed by an impersonal lawyer. Wood’s
decision surprised her, she claims, and the Berberians’ anger scared
her. “I’m like, ‘Oh, great, not only do I have to do this, but I have
to deal with these mad people who didn’t.’ ”
Green may be painting herself as more of a novice than she is. Her
husband, Steve, is an estate attorney. And, as Green admits, she
wrote the original letter to the court that started the process.
Judge Wood told the women that he thought Green would be better
equipped to make the tough decision: to force Sanjakian into an
assisted care facility. He even chose the place, Colonial Oaks at
Braeswood. (Kornblit says the judge only suggested that facility;
Green and Berberian say they believed Wood ordered it.)
Getting Sanjakian there wouldn’t be easy. She had refused to come to
the hearing and refused to give Berberian power of attorney — had
she done either, she might have been spared from Wood’s decision. Now
she was livid about being forced from her home. She told Green she
wasn’t leaving. If they came to get her, she vowed, she’d come out
shooting.
When deputy constables arrived on December 30 to move her, Sanjakian
bit them and pulled their hair. They had to use handcuffs to take her
away.
Today, in Sanjakian’s room at Colonial Oaks, an aide watches as she
naps and entertains visitors. Her room is tidy, if impersonal. The
framed black-and-white photos of Sanjakian and her late husband are
the only real reminder of her earlier life.
When Berberian comes to visit, Sanjakian kisses her and proudly tells
the assistant, “That’s my goddaughter.” A tiny woman with a long
white braid and sunken cheeks, she looks nothing like the robust
image framed on the wall. Her Turkish accent is thick; her voice,
high and quavering.
She gets her hair washed every other day, which she loves. The staff
is kind, she says.
But she wants to go home.
“That Jackie wants to sell my house,” Sanjakian announces angrily.
“She is a bad girl. If she comes in here, I will call the police.”
Green knows her former neighbor blames her. Sanjakian refuses to see
her, Green admits, and has told her to go to hell. “She says she’s
going to get out in a year and sue me,” she says. “But the doctors
say she doesn’t have a year to live.”
Unknown to Sanjakian, her things were sold last month: her dresses,
her husband’s ties, her perfume and china.
Everything that didn’t sell was packed up and taken away, to be given
to charity or rummaged at later sales. Nobody has need for her reams
of colorful scarves, or records of Armenian hymns, or dozens of pairs
of white gloves.
Her house will be sold soon, too, and likely demolished. The county
values the lot at $500,000; the old house is more liability than
asset in such a tony neighborhood.
She’s a rich woman. Although she worried constantly about money, she
had some $200,000 in the bank, according to court records. While
Green and Berberian each suggest that money is the only thing the
other cares about, neither will get any of Sanjakian’s funds. There’s
enough to pay for her care at Colonial Oaks and attorney Kornblit,
who has earned $8,200 to date and continues to handle the widow’s
legal affairs.
After she dies, whatever funds are left will be sent to an Armenian
hospital in Istanbul. And that, at least, is what she wanted.
Sanjakian was hardly organized, but she had her own unique filing
system.
Just before the estate sale, Green found her will, tucked carefully
into her box of Depends.