My wife and I were appalled by the apparent hoax that the owner of the Zuma Beach General Store pulled by having an ad for its business published in the form of an obituary in last week’s Surfside News. In our years of living and working in our town, we have lost several friends to untimely deaths resulting from traffic accidents and other tragedies. So, when we read an obituary in our local newspapers, we take such announcements very seriously and feel a genuine empathy for the family and friends of the deceased. We therefore went to the Zuma Beach General Store (our first and only visit) to express our deepest sympathy to a family that we had yet to meet. To our shock, we found a rather embarrassed worker behind the counter, who initially claimed that he had no knowledge about any of this. However, he told us that this, indeed, was the store alluded to in the obituary. He hesitated for a few seconds and then mumbled that no one actually passed away, and that there was never any change in the ownership of the store. We were then told that the owner has a “strange sense of humor” (an incorrect diagnosis in our humble opinion) and that he used this phony obituary to attract customers. We never met this owner, but, based on this false obituary, he displayed a total lack of character to dupe our caring community into reacting to a completely false announcement that most reasonable people would otherwise take very seriously and feel a sense of loss in the community. (Upon closer examination, we noticed the word “Advertisement” printed outside the boxed obituary, which appeared in such a small font size that we never noticed it, and, even upon a second look, we mistook it as part of the “Public Notice” items on the same page. Frankly, does this “fine print” absolve the Surfside News of publishing what appears to be a manipulation of its re adership? Upon another careful review, we also noticed a dubious web site at the end of the announcement. It never dawned on us that we now must thoroughly analyze published obituaries for authenticity.
David and Denise Pepper