Wallace's Texas electrician licensing application, which had been pending for 2 years, was permanently denied. The Tesla was sold at a salvage auction in March for $5,800. In the weeks between Tamsin's plea and the new HOA board election, Sandia Vista Estates went through its own quiet reorganization. The retired engineer, Wendell Bouchard, who had stepped down from the presidency in 2021 because of his wife Renata's stroke, drove over to our property in mid-May with Renata in her wheelchair. Renata had recovered partial function across the previous 28 months and was again able to communicate carefully through a small assistive tablet.
They sat on our porch with Sigrid and me for 2 hours. Wendell wanted to formally apologize for not having pushed back against Tamsin's election in 2021. Renata, through her tablet, wanted Sigrid to know that she had been quietly horrified by what Tamsin had been doing across the previous 3 years and had not, due to her recovery, been able to do anything about it. Sigrid had taken Renata's hand. The four of us had sat together for a long time.
Wendell had said finally, "Otto, Sigrid, I want to run for the new board. I want to restore the presidency to its quiet original purpose. Will the two of you support me publicly when the election runs?" I had told him yes. Sigrid had told him yes.
Wendell ran. He took the vice presidency on the new board in a deliberate junior role while a younger former chemistry professor took the presidency. Renata attends every monthly meeting in a wheelchair. The community has by every measure I can see become the kind of small Sandoval County neighborhood it should have been from the start. The Sandia Vista Estates HOA elected a new board in late June.
The new president is a 72-year-old retired University of New Mexico chemistry professor named Edmund Pemberton Halloran. Edmund drove out to our property the first Saturday of July with a casserole and a handwritten apology from the new board. He sat on our porch with Sigrid and me for 3 hours. He formally apologized for the previous board's failure to oversee Tamsin's behavior. He told us in plain New Mexico English that the new board had repealed the 11 self-serving bylaws Tamsin had passed across her presidency and was going to be a quieter neighbor going forward.
We have hosted Edmund and his wife Cordelia for dinner four times since. The story brought significant new customer interest to my consulting practice. The Albuquerque Journal ran a feature article on the case in late February. The article was titled The Engineer's Inverter. The article was syndicated by the Santa Fe New Mexican the following weekend.
The article was picked up by IEEE Spectrum in their July issue under the headline "When the Off-Grid Has the Law on Its Side." I have, since the IEEE Spectrum article, received 23 requests from other off-grid solar system owners across the western United States for consulting engagements on theft-resistant inverter