The Rotary Club of Kirkland held a meeting on November 21, 2022 at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel.
Past-president Rick Walter, substituting for President Amy Mutal rang the bell at 6:15 p.m., calling the club meeting to order.
John Pruitt led the membership in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Attending were George Anderson, David Aubry, Don Dicks, Jocelyn Ellison, Doug Evanson, Mekong Giorgis, Jim Meniketti, Kristin Olson, Rick Ostrander, John Pruitt, Steve Shinstrom, John Storbeck, and Rick Walter. Zoom was not available this evening.
Guests:
This evening’s guests were introduced by Rick Walter, who welcomed back Olivia Koelsch from Jefferson House, a Kirkland memory care facility, for her second visit, Karen Quirk, a former Club member, who joined us later, in person, for her second visit, and Beth Morrison.
Jim Meniketti manned the front desk.
Rick revived a tradition with a Rotary Minute. He reminded us that the idea for the Rotary International Foundation first arose in 1917. It began with a discussion of the idea of an endowment fund that would allow Rotary to do good things on a sustaining basis. The Paul Harris Fellowship idea began in 1957. In 100 years, the Foundation has given away three billion dollars around the world. This money has at times been matched, such as the Gates Foundation contribution of hundreds of millions of dollars towards the fight to eradicate polio.
Announcements, Club Business, Committee Reports:
Dave Aubry will be sending out information about a club work party, packing food boxes at Hopelink here in Kirkland. There will be a couple of dates in January from which to select by vote. We will probably work from 10-12 noon, with the opportunity to get together for lunch afterwards.
Doug Evanson announced that club members brought lots of food to the meeting, which he will be delivering tomorrow to John Muir Elementary. The food is for a twenty of families designated by the school.
Doug also reminded us that holiday gift shopping is coming up again for John Muir families. Sign up on the club’s website. Shopping lists will be available in a couple of weeks.
Remember the gift-wrapping party, to be immediately followed by catered holiday party, again at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 105 State Street South, on December 19. Sign up through email from Pres. Amy on Monday.
Rick informed us that there will be no meeting next Monday, November 28. December 5, the Student of the Month program will begin, plus the District Governor will be here on the 5th.
Salvation Army Bell Ringing sign-ups are available through the email that Joanne Primavera sent everyone. Everyone is encouraged to participate.
Happy Bucks:
There were no Happy Bucks this evening.
Program:
Rick introduced our speaker for the evening, Bill Reed, the CFO of the MFR Law Group. His subject was the “Challenges related to Consumer and Business Fraud”. He first told us a bit about himself. He does a lot of work with underprivileged families and kids.
He then showed us some questions on the screen – asking who is the most-targeted group for fraud, and which group suffers the most losses. Most of us assumed that older people would be the answer to both questions, but that is only true for the second question. The most targeted group is younger adults.
Note: look for an email yesterday from Gary Cohn with some documents that Mr. Reed shared on the subject of consumer fraud.
Mr. Reed covered a lot of material, the gist of which is that everyone in any organization is responsible for preventing fraudulent activity, and we are all potential targets of fraud during our routine activities. Using a credit or debit card, using our computer or other internet-connected device, answering the phone – all these activities can expose you or an organization to a person attempting to defraud you.
There are many steps we can all take to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of fraud – these are a few of them:
- Do not answer the phone if you do not know who is calling.
- Do not respond to questions or solicitations from unknown companies or persons.
- Be careful how and where you use your credit or debit card.
- Have good passwords everywhere and change them every ninety days.
- Have good antivirus protection on all your devices.
- Review all financial statements at least monthly for unauthorized activity.
- Do a credit report once or twice a year.
- Limit the number of apps on your phone or PDA.
- Multi-layered authentication for log-ins is far more secure than just a password.
- Do not use unsecure wi-fi connections.
- Avoid using non-bank ATMs.
- Do not enable auto-populate for online passwords, especially for financial accounts.
- Use only a credit card for online purchases – not a debit card. You have more recourse if a problem arises with a credit card than with a debit card.
- Do not carry your social security number anywhere on your person.
- You can freeze your credit and that will prevent any additional accounts being opened in your name. Be sure to unfreeze when you want to open a new account or when your insurance bill is due. [Insurance companies rely at least partially on credit reports when calculating risk, and therefor cost to you.]
There were several more points that can help to keep us secure, but the above, if applied consistently, will reduce risk.
Rotarians asked pertinent questions during and after this very informative presentation.
Adjournment:
The meeting was adjourned at 7:18 p.m.
Respectfully Submitted
Dave Aubry, Acting Scribe