ST. CHARLES — Bob Trigg’s grandson gave him a vape pen as a Christmas gift, to help him sleep.
Trigg, 82, has had problems with sleep lately. He’s tried everything. His first visit to an overnight sleep clinic ended with a diagnosis of “periodic limb movement disorder.” The medicine for that didn’t work. Then he was diagnosed with sleep apnea. The machine was a pain.
“I hated it and couldn’t use it,” he says.
Visit No. 3 led to an Ambien prescription. “It didn’t help,” Trigg says.
His grandson, who lives in Wisconsin, thought the vape pen might help.
“I didn’t know what a vape pen was,” says Trigg, a 1959 graduate of St. Louis University High School and a 1963 graduate of St. Louis University. He was a soccer star at both schools and is in the St. Louis Soccer Hall of Fame.
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The former striker loves to talk about soccer, but ask him about specific games he played and his memory gets a little foggy.
“I scored 42 goals at SLU, and I don’t remember one of them,” Trigg told me.
He doesn’t remember much about the vape pen either. Trigg doesn’t know what was in it. Maybe marijuana. But it helped him sleep. He normally smoked it after he was in bed because it made him dizzy.
One night in February, he fell before he got into bed. The paramedics had to come take him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with COVID-19. The paramedics saw the vape pen and noted it in their records.
Trigg lives in the St. William Apartments II in Dardenne Prairie. It’s a senior living facility run by Cardinal Ritter Senior Services, an arm of Catholic Charities of St. Louis. He’s been there a few years. His lease has a provision that bans marijuana.
When Trigg got back to his apartment, he was served with eviction papers because of the vape pen. He was dumbfounded.
“I was just trying to get some sleep,” he says. “I don’t think I did anything wrong.”
The eviction notice, a first for Trigg, was shocking. “I had never felt that sort of rejection before,” he says.
Thinking he was going to need another place to live, he started looking for apartments in the Lake Saint Louis area, near where his daughter lives. The monthly rents were $1,400 or more. He pays $525 a month, and that includes utilities. It’s about a third of his Social Security income.
It’s also less than St. William Apartments wants to charge him apparently. According to the eviction lawsuit, the “market rate” for the apartment where Trigg lives is $877. “Plaintiff has suffered damages and is entitled to double rent,” the eviction lawsuit says.
Facing eviction, Trigg called Zeus. That’s his name for an old high school and college classmate, Stephen Hanlon. Zeus is an attorney of some national repute. He’s been successfully bringing attention to the problem many states have with underfunded and overworked public defender offices.
The Class of 1959 is close. A dozen or so of them still meet at Chris’ Pancake House once a month. Hanlon emailed the high school classmates to rally support for Trigg. And he called Brendan Roediger, who runs one of the law clinics at SLU, to ask if law students could represent Trigg.
Camilla Moreno Jimenez took the case. She’s a third-year law student. Her focus is health care law, and that’s how she saw this case.
“It became apparent that the case was about what’s best for him in the long term,” she says. “It’s about his health and keeping him comfortable.”
Trigg’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the eviction, noting that Missouri voters legalized marijuana, adding the provision to the state Constitution in 2022. Hanlon and his fellow SLU High classmates were more concerned about the Archdiocese being involved in kicking an 82-year-old man out of his apartment.
“It borders on being silly,” says Bill Pautler, a lifelong friend. “He wasn’t hurting anybody.”
Pautler showed up in St. Charles County Circuit Court on Friday, when Trigg’s eviction case was scheduled to be tried.
Shortly before the case headed to trial, the attorney for the apartment complex, Patrick McGlaughlin, of the Spencer Fane law firm, huddled with Roediger and Moreno Jimenez outside the courtroom. The attorneys agreed that Trigg could remain in his apartment as long as he abides by the lease requirement that he not use marijuana.
Trigg is glad to be going home. He doesn’t make all the Class of 1959 lunches — he doesn’t drive anymore and uses a wheelchair — but he plans to go to the next one.
Zeus will have a gift. He has the vape pen, and he plans to frame it and give it to Trigg.
Trigg might want to keep it at his grandson’s house. Just to be safe.