Connie Cook thought she had her retirement all figured out.
Ten years ago, the 66-year-old dance therapist invested her life savings in a west Sonoma County dream home at the end of a country lane, complete with two rental units she thought would guarantee her a comfortable living into her golden years.
It worked until February 2009, when a seemingly down-on-her-luck single-mother and law student moved into Cook's converted red barn and quickly became Cook's tenant from hell.
Cook said Gwen Smith, 53, drove off Cook's other tenant and then stopped paying rent, part of a pattern documented by previous court judgments against Smith. After an 18-month legal battle to get her off the property, the tenant finally pulled up stakes in August.
But the damage was done.
Without the rental income from the two units, Cook's finances were ruined. She sold the house at a loss this week on the brink of foreclosure, the final chapter of a story told in April and August in The Press Democrat.
In a cruel bit of irony, the new owners may agree to rent Cook the very same unit that had been occupied by Smith and her teenage son -- the converted barn on a rural spot on Douglas Lane.
"My heart is broken," Cook said Thursday as she walked the acre property she bought with inheritance from her father. "What she's done is criminal. She sent me from heaven to hell," she said of her former tenant.
Earlier this week, Superior Court Judge Mark Tansil ordered Smith to pay Cook $49,635 in back rent and damages. The order followed a three-day trial in which Smith, a paralegal who represented herself, claimed the unit was substandard.
Cook's lawyer, Jim Sansone of Santa Rosa, said his client has little hope of ever recovering a penny of the money because Smith has tens of thousands of dollars in judgments against her from past landlords, including one in Sebastopol and several in other states.
"At the very least, we got the word out about her," Sansone said. "She's a serial squatter. I think the evidence clearly established that."
Smith could not be reached. Her Orange County lawyer, Gary Levinson, did not return a phone call Thursday.
At trial, the woman who admitted to using at least three aliases said she moved 500 miles away because of newspaper publicity surrounding her case, Sansone said.
Statements at trial suggested she was living in Oregon. Sansone said Smith claimed to have taken the California bar examination in July and was awaiting results.
Smith's court record as a tenant in Sonoma County and out of state became public this spring, when she lost a decision to her previous landlord, Barbara Wilt of Sebastopol.
In that case, Judge Elliot Daum concluded Smith maliciously and manipulatively stopped paying rent after she moved into Wilt's apartment. He ordered her to pay $42,500 in back rent and damages. Smith has appealed the decision, saying the unit was uninhabitable.
Other details of her past emerged, including an $80,000 judgment in Wisconsin and landlord-tenant cases in Hawaii, Arizona, Delaware and Missouri.
Wilt's lawyer, Lisa Gygax, said Smith is able to manipulate landlords because she is familiar with laws that allow a tenant to withhold rent for even minor housing violations. Her history can be unknown to potential landlords because of other laws requiring secrecy around eviction proceedings.
A simple cure would be to require renters to pay into a trust account while violations are investigated and corrected, Gygax said.
"We'd get rid of 80 percent of the unlawful detainer cases in California," she said.
While fighting Wilt in court, Smith and her son moved into Cook's upstairs unit on the Douglas Lane property. Smith was living in a 1,200-square-foot one-bedroom house on the same property.
Cook said she didn't know about Smith's problems with Wilt because Smith didn't disclose her as a prior landlord. She did check a reference, but didn't dig deeply into Smith's background, instead relying on a feeling that Smith was trustworthy. She said she felt sympathy for her because she was a single mother, who simply seemed to be doing the best she can.
But by June 2009, Cook said Smith stopped paying rent, saying the unit was substandard. She changed the locks twice during her tenancy and wouldn't allow Cook inside. Scheduled court hearings dragged out the process.
Cook said the woman told her the apartment was making her sick, needed repairs and that the water was bad. She sent repairmen and conducted a test on the water which showed it was fine, she said.
Less than an hour before an eviction hearing on Aug. 11, Smith packed her belongings and moved out after 18 months. Her son had been attending nearby Analy High School, but was not enrolled this fall.
On Thursday, Cook walked the apartment, surveying some remaining damage such as holes in walls and stained carpet. People who have read about her plight have volunteered to paint and repair the unit with a sunset view so she can move in.
Cook said she developed a bond with the new owners at the first open house.
"They knew about my situation," she said. "When they walked in and saw what I was losing they had tears in their eyes."
Now, Cook said she'll hold a garage sale to thin some of the belongings she acquired over her nearly 40-year career in which she treated patients around the country and in Europe. She'll also look for a job but she said it's unlikely she'll return to her old profession.
Starting over will be tough, she said.
"I've got to get work of some kind," Cook said. "I really wasn't planning on this."
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