by Mark McDermott
A few years ago, something happened to Kayla Smith’s grandmother that stuck with her. Her grandmother received a phone call regarding her son, Kayla’s father, Mike.
“Listen to me, Jane,” the caller said. “We have Mike held hostage. You need to buy $4,000 in Target gift cards immediately and call us back with their numbers & passwords. Do not tell anyone about this or else we will hurt Mike.”
A snippet of what sounded like Mike Smith’s voice came on the line. “Please do what they say,” he said.
Her grandma did exactly what the caller had asked. But afterwards, she came to realize none of it had been real — Mike had not been held hostage, and his voice had apparently been mimicked with AI or some other technology. The only thing that was real was the fact that she’d just lost $4,000. She’d been scammed.
Not long after, Kayla’s grandfather was the victim of a smaller scam, an email that offered brand name shoes at a quarter of their normal price. He ordered four pairs and never received them, losing a few hundred dollars.
And even her parents were repeatedly targeted by scams, such as a text that each received claiming they owed a delinquent toll fee. Her father likewise received a phone claiming he had a past due tax bill.
Smith, who is a junior at Mira Costa High School, decided to do something about all these scams she was witnessing. She started her own one-person mission, called SeniorSafe, aimed at educating the older adult population about the prevalence of scams that target them.
“I started thinking about spreading awareness on this issue,” she said. “Because I feel like seniors are a pretty overlooked population in regards to online safety, and they’re the most targeted by a lot of scammers and hackers. A third of all seniors have been scammed at some point in their senior years. I just wanted to make a change.”
She thought a lot about what had happened to her grandmother. The scammer had both used advanced technology and the most delicate of human emotions, a mother’s love for her son.
“So she was freaking out because it sounded like my Dad’s voice,” Smith said. “She wasn’t thinking, why would [the man on the phone] want me to send a few thousand dollar Target gift cards? Or why would someone say by 6 p.m. tonight? She wasn’t thinking of the reasoning behind this. She was mainly thinking of getting my Dad to safety. And she lost thousands of dollars because of this.”
Kayla was only in middle school at the time and the details only filtered back to her family later, because her grandmother was embarrassed. The more Kayla thought about what had occurred, the more she wanted to take something bad that had occurred and turn it into something good — that is, to do something to help educate local seniors so no else suffers the same experience as her grandmother.
“I felt like it was super important to protect this population,” she said.
Scams targeting seniors are increasingly proliferating. According to a recent FBI report, seniors in the United States last year lost $4.9 billion to scammers, up 43 percent from 2023 and by far more than any other age group.
“They are definitely more targeted,” Smith said. “Because this technology is relatively new. I’ve grown up around it, but they haven’t. It’s like they are still all figuring out how to use this form of technology.”
SeniorSafe isn’t a non-profit and it isn’t something Smith is doing to build her resume before college. It is simply her way of helping. Smith is a “digital native” and thus understands the internet in a way that nobody from older generations could. So she put together a presentation, and went to visit local senior centers. Smith has made two presentations so far, and a tip sheet she made has been used both by the centers she visited as well as others she has not yet given a presentation to.
Her advice would make any grandmother proud. Her tips are common sensical. Never, Smith says, give out one’s personal information — your banking account, social security number, passwords or driver’s license number. Second, as her tip sheet says, “Google it!” Because as Smith notes, most scams are pretty well vetted online.
“A lot of the scams are pretty common,” she said. “If you look it up, a lot of times there will be like a Reddit page, or someone posting about it somewhere online, like, ‘Is anyone else getting these emails?’”
Smith advises to never click on unknown or suspicious links; to check the actual websites often cited by scammers (Amazon, UPS, IRS) to see if the information being provided is actually on the site; call family members directly when in doubt; and, when it comes to big discounts, incredible investment opportunities, and winning a contest you don’t recall entering, “If it’s too good to be true, it likely is!”
Smith is hoping to make more presentations, but also simply to bring more attention to the issue, particularly with seniors themselves. Many are unaware that they have become a target for criminals.
“Even just spreading awareness that scamming seniors is super common — if these people know that it’s common, they might be a little more careful when going online or receiving phone calls,” Smith said. “They might think twice, even if they don’t know, ‘I should block this email’ or ‘I shouldn’t respond.’ They should second guess before they send money or are giving passwords away.”
Her father, Michael, has marveled at how his daughter has taken the initiative on this issue. She’d been to one of the senior centers where she gave her presentation, Brookdale, previously as a member of a dance club that came to entertain the residents. Through that visit she made a contact at the senior center, who she then called to ask if she could come give her SeniorSafe presentation.
“They went and [danced] because they thought that would be a good thing to bring joy to people’s lives,” he said. “But then it didn’t stop there. She thought, ‘I want to spread the word there…’ So to see her connect these dots is amazing.”
After that same presentation, Smith stayed and worked with several of the senior residents one-on-one, not just for scam prevention but also just to show them how to better organize the digital aspects of their lives.
“It was super rewarding to work with them one-on-one…helping them become more tech-savvy,” she said. “I was helping with like, ‘Here’s how you send a text,’ or ‘Here’s how you can respond to an email or organize your emails on your phone.’ Just engagement like that makes it feel like I am not just talking to no one. I’m actually having an impact on these people’s lives.” ER
