Staff writer

Considering the role computers play in daily life, it’s important that Rossmoor has its own Computer Club.

It comes in handy when residents run into predicaments. That was especially the case for one resident after she was the victim of a cybercrime.

A resident recently reached out to the News to describe her experience of being hacked. Perpetrators who claimed to be with major tech and financial companies tried to steal a substantial amount of money from her financial accounts, she said.

After this harrowing incident, she has a sense of relief and gratitude for the Computer Club and particularly Bill Hammond, the club’s technical director, who cleaned up and restored her two laptops to safety, after her financial institutions moved to recover her funds.

“We are so blessed to have these folks available,” the resident told the News. “They are so kind and patient in the way they handle every situation.”

The News does not name residents who are victims of crime. Therefore, the resident in this case is unnamed, and certain details pertaining to the incident have been omitted.

The Computer Club offers house calls for its membership, which is about 1,200 strong, including the woman in this instance. But in this case, Hammond went above and beyond the club’s scope for house calls, said Rhona Lishinsky, the Computer Club’s president.

This resident is much appreciative of Hammond, who spent two hours at a house call to scrub both her computers. Scrubbing involves detail work such as checking whether connections made with a computer system are legitimate or illegal, and looking for PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), he described.

The woman’s sense of relief came after a strange unfolding of events after she had just purchased a laptop to replace an aging one.

Suddenly, the screen on her old machine “went berserk,” she said. “There’s vertical, there’s horizontal, and there’s color, and there’s sound.

“It’s all over the place, so your mouse cannot do anything; there’s nothing to click on,” she said. “It tells you this is an emergency situation, please don’t shut down your computer, and to call this phone number immediately.”

It’s uncertain what led to malware showing up on the resident’s laptop screen, Hammond said. Often, it can result from someone clicking on a dubious email.

Calling that number was a mistake, said the resident, who later realized that hitting control- alt-delete on her keyboard could have made the “warning” go away. Instead, the call connected her with the two purported experts, who proceeded to drag out things over the next few days.

After four days and being frustrated with how things were progressing, she made a direct call to her investment company, one of the nation’s largest and best-known. She reached its fraud department, which she has praised for its thorough response in getting her funds rightfully restored, after it had detected suspicious activity and locked her accounts.

“The fraud department was wonderful,” she said. She was instructed to shut down both laptops and to not open either until they were scrubbed.

She turned to the Computer Club and Hammond, who went the extra mile, or 10 miles. For its house calls, Computer Club doesn’t handle major issues such as virus removal, data recovery or hardware repairs.

Most often, the Computer Club handles problems involving printers, email or forgotten passwords – “the bane of our existence,” as Lishinsky put it.

The club has a handful of volunteers who provide numerous tasks, including “lab time” to help those who come to the Computer Center at Gateway. The house call program, run by Alice Lawrence, comprises nine technicians selected for that role based on considerable expertise, Lishinsky said. For instance, Hammond worked as a network consultant for 35 years and taught computer science at Diablo Valley College.

While house calls are strictly for Computer Club members, any Rossmoor resident can visit the Computer Center for computer or other tech issues they have, Lishinsky said. With the popularity of mobile devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones, many residents opt to bring in those devices to have their issues checked out.

Go to www.caccor.com to find out more about the Computer Club.