Going down a highway or back road and seeing police sirens flash behind you always makes your heart sink since you know you’re getting a ticket. A 90-year-old veteran, on the other hand, hasn’t been behind the wheel, yet still finds himself incurring a number of tickets.
John J. Maffucci was a sailor during the Korean War and hasn’t driven a car in New York for half a decade. Nonetheless, he finds himself on the receiving end of a multitude of tickets and it’s been happening since his car’s license plate was stolen. Back in January 2020, Maffucci struck a deer with his Honda. Shortly afterward, his front license plate went missing. Despite replacing the plates himself through the Department of Motor Vehicles, he receives speeding tickets the thief is earning.
“This guy’s running around with my plate and whatever happens, it comes back to me. I didn’t do anything!” Maffucci told the New York Post. “I’m at his mercy. I watch the mail every day thinking, ‘Oh God, what is he going to do today?'”
The first speeding ticket arrived in his mail at Westchester roughly 16 months later. He reported the theft to state police, but the tickets (five as of this writing) keep arriving. Donald Lee Singer, his lawyer, filed a lawsuit on his behalf against the city. “I don’t think what happened is right,” Singer said.
Luckily, Maffucci beat most of his tickets but one judge found him guilty of speeding and refuses to concede it wasn’t him.
Maffucci spent much of his life as a parole officer and decades as a private investigator, so he knows exactly what’s happening. “Somebody’s using a stolen plate and nobody’s doing anything.”
Hopefully, the issue gets sorted sooner rather than later.
Marine Veteran Runs 1,000 Miles with American Flag for Homeless Veterans
While one veteran, unfortunately, had something taken from him, another in recent memory is trying to give back. A North Carolina Marine has run more than 1,000 miles to assist homeless veterans.
Russell Larkins spoke to Spectrum News 1 earlier this month about his endeavor and revealed running serves as a form of therapy for him. On top of that, he realized it was easy to use that passion as a cause to help fellow veterans. “I was really inspired to start running again when the 13 service members were killed in Afghanistan, and so I ran 30 miles a day for 13 days straight for them,” Larkins said when talking about his idea’s humble beginning.
His latest objective had him run 400 laps at Wrightsville Beach, which is 1,000 miles. Additionally, he carries the American flag on his shoulder for every lap. He hopes it will draw attention to his current cause of helping homeless veterans get off the streets.
Though his cause is specific, he hopes others will run for what they believe in too. “It doesn’t have to be for veterans, it doesn’t have to be for homelessness. Whatever your cause is, everyone struggles with something different, you go out there and you run for it,” Larkins said.
