survivors’ stories
BACK FROM THE BRINK
Stock market swindles and greedy CEOs
brought these folks close to financial ruin.
First they got angry. Then they got busy
PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK FRASER
WHEN ENERG Y GIAN T Enron collapsed in a scandal of nonexistent profits and fal-
sified accounting in 2002, Lois Black lost
her job. Worse, the legal secretary at the
company’s Houston headquarters lost ev-
erything in her 401(k) retirement savings—
almost $150,000. “I know, I know—it was
dumb to put so much of my money into
Enron stock,” says Black, “but [CEO] Ken
Lay sent us constant voice mails saying
everything was great. We believed it.”
Then 62, Black knew she didn’t want an-
WIPED OUT BY ENRON
other secretarial job. “I’d had my fill of lawyers younger than my kids walking right past
the Xerox machine to ask me to copy a single
sheet,” she says. Yet her $18,000 severance—
five months’ salary—wouldn’t go far, and she
had only $50,000 in retirement savings. She
applied for Social Security, but collecting
before full retirement age meant a benefit of less than $1,000 a month. Black, who
is divorced, needed a new source of income.
Betting that young girls would love elaborate tea parties as much as her granddaughter did, she launched Tea Parties To Go. She
scoured thrift stores for clothing in tiny sizes
so the partygoers could play dress-up. She
found pintsize tables and chairs to set up at
the birthday girl’s home, which she’d decorate like a mini wedding reception. She placed
