DALLAS — Six months after 87-year-old Poldi Tonin was rescued from the filth and rot of her rat-infested East Dallas house — long cut off from the outside world — she begins 2023 in a safe new home and with cautious hope for a new life.
Poldi’s story, which I first told in August, is that of a woman well-read and street smart who returned to Dallas after years working in New York City. She bought a white-frame cottage on the edge of Lakewood in 1987 and rode the bus daily to her job downtown.
But the residue of soul-crushing trauma from her early years — episodes that even now she insists on keeping locked away — got the better of Poldi. Depression and anxiety inflated a distorted sense of mistrust, anger and, finally, the decision to exist with her beloved terrier Lexi in total isolation.
