CARMEN’S DEATH
Carmen Towles passed away in July of 2020. I found out on July 25th from a client. I believe she passed away on the 24th, but I see other conflicting reports on Notary Rotary saying it happened two weeks before that. The last time I talked to Carmen was on June 29th when she was released from the hospital. She was able to talk but wasn’t making logical sense. She couldn’t remember if she had a gall stone or a kidney stone. I think you would remember that.

Carmen died of Pancreatic cancer, but had a gall bladder infection too. She never told me about the cancer, perhaps because she didn’t want me to worry. I think it would have been better if she had told me so I could plan ahead.

OUR HISTORY TOGETHER
In any case, Carmen and I worked together for 17 years since 2003. I remember the first time I met her at the entrance to our complex. I was selling her a course book. She was very talkative, inquisitive, and sharp. She kept calling me to ask questions and became very knowledgeable as a signing agent. Carmen claimed she took the NNA course, but that it did not make her feel confident enough to go out and do real signing work. After she mastered our 123notary course, she felt she got a practical road map of what to do and how to handle situations. As time went on, I begged her to work for me. She initially didn’t want to. It took a few years to get her to work full time. After she got used to it, signings slowed down, and she became hooked on 123. She did the new sales and renewals and was very possessive about the work.

CARMEN AS A MENTOR
Carmen was an excellent mentor to many of our Notaries. She taught them the twists and turns of what can happen at signings and with the various companies who hire Notaries. She kept many out of trouble and inspired all. She had real charisma, pizzazz, combined with a deep and pragmatic knowledge of Notary law and signing competency. Nobody else combined her flamboyance and knowledge. None of the other Notary companies have anyone even half as good as she was.

CARMEN’S INPUT
Carmen helped me put together a new over the phone test content as well as a new course which is on the blog and free — Notary Public 101. We wanted to emphasize what gets Notaries in trouble, so they can stay out of trouble. The other courses taught information which was about loan documents which is fine, but you don’t normally get in trouble for not understanding the documents, you get in trouble for notary mistakes or mishandling situations.

OUR LOSS
The Notaries are very sad that Carmen is gone. There will never be another Carmen. I am sad that I never got to say goodbye. I didn’t think she would pass away so fast. I thought she had another year where she would function at half speed. But, I can communicate easily with spirits, so I have had a few simple dialogues with Carmen.

JEREMY: How are things in the brighter world?
CARMEN: I’m getting a lot of rest.

JEREMY: What will I do without you?
CARMEN: Oh, don’t worry about it.

JEREMY: Do you have to wear face masks up there?
CARMEN: Ha ha…. no!!!

LIFE WITHOUT CARMEN
So, now I have to do all of Carmen’s work. I call all of the renewal people. It wouldn’t take that long except that the higher level people like to chat. Many of our higher level people have been with us for years, in some cases up to 20 years, and they have stories from long back. The bigger issue is not having to do her work. I am missing the new calls because I am not prepared to answer the phone all the time. I am not sure how I will hire someone new who will be acceptable and who will last.

And third, I miss Carmen because she is like a family member to me. She understood me well, and had very sensible advice for me about all of my issues. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of her advice, but most of it was good. I am very sad, lonely and don’t know what to expect of the future. The future doesn’t look very bright now, but you never know. I am going to try out several new ladies who seem promising.

With all of the bad vibes in the atmosphere due to the Covid19 issue, riots, and political upheaval, it seemed like the devil made his rounds to disrupt many cities, many lives, many political issues, etc. First there were Covid19 shutdowns which took away our rights. 80% of what I could do outside of the house was shut down or disappeared. Then the devil came to my neighborhood with the riots. A month later my site went down for a week. Actually that was done by angels for my protection, but felt like the devil was somehow involved. And then my site went back up, Carmen became incapacitated and then died shortly after. So much grief in just five months. No wonder I feel more depressed than I have felt in years.

Carmen was always there, usually answered the phone, only went on one quick vacation that I knew about which was a cruise in Mexico. But, she kept her phone with her so she was accessible. She even did phone duty while she was on Jury Duty. She was always there, and now she will never be there again.

I will have my psychic contact Carmen in the brighter world to see if she has anything she wants to tell the Notaries. My ability for spirit communication is okay for very quick questions and answers but not good enough for conversations. So, we will leave this up to Walter who is an expert.

Incoming phone communication to 123notary is basically almost impossible now. I answer some of my incoming calls. but, I really can’t get more than 10%. If you want to reach me fast, just use the email form on 123epayment.com. I am very slow by info@123notary.com, so if you are in a hurry, 123epayment.com is a little faster.

So for now, that is all I can say.

123notary has a review system. You can write a good review or a bad review. Contrary to popular belief, getting a bad review doesn’t ruin you, but getting no reviews will… kind of. For every 20 good reviews we get about one bad review, so the reviews are mostly positive. People don’t write bad reviews much because it is mean, and because they don’t want drama. But, there is another reason.

People who make technical mistakes on loan signings get caught when they scan back the documents. They can fix the problem before it is too late. So, the loan signing and title companies have less of a reason to write you up for that. Most of the complaints we get in 2020 are because the Notary did a no-show, didn’t return the documents, or was rude.

Generally speaking if a Notary was rude, there are two sides to the story. Usually it involves a misunderstanding. Perhaps the borrower told them one thing and then did another. Perhaps someone switched a time, wants to read forever, or there are more pages or notarizations than previously stated. Or perhaps someone who is supposed to be there is not there or someone walks out and doesn’t explain why. The family might be having a dispute with each other which the notary might get involved in.

There are many reasons you could get into an argument. The best thing is to try to not react to the other person’s bad behavior which is hard. But, on a brighter note, we hardly ever get complaints about the technical skills of our Notaries.