MILWAUKEE - — Imagine walking outside to find the shingles ripped off your roof — it would be shocking, right? Especially if you had not hired anyone to do that.
That's exactly what happened to a woman in Milwaukee, Betty Banks, and she says there was no sign of who had stripped the roof or why.
Betty turned to TMJ4 News for help and Lighthouse our specialty reporting unit, responded to her call.
"A lot of memories here," said Betty, standing in the backyard of her home. She's lived in Milwaukee's Lincoln Park neighborhood for 40 years. And she added that she's been lucky to have good neighbors.
One of those good neighbors noticed a home improvement company pull into this alley back in May and start removing shingles from the roof of Betty's garage. "I had to track them down. They didn't leave any information," she recalled. "And if it had not been for my neighbors I wouldn't have known anything."
At first, Betty said, the home improvement company denied that they were responsible. "And then I told them, well my neighbor saw you and she can describe you."
Betty said eventually, the owner of the home improvement company admitted his crews had started work on the wrong garage and promised to fix the mistake. "The address is on here, I don't understand how they could get that mixed up," she questioned while pointing to the address numbers displayed on her garage.
Watch: Woman gets new roof after old one mistakenly removed.
It turns out, one of Betty's neighbors two doors down hired the company to work on their roof which, after realizing the mistake, the roofing company eventually did. But more than a month later, Betty's remained in disrepair.
Unsure of where to turn, Betty tried to involve the police but says she was told it didn't rise to the level of criminal activity. "If they do it intentionally then they can do something," explained Betty. "But if they do it unintentionally, and they're gonna fix it, then you should allow them to fix it. But I said, how long? you know — how long?"
Tired of waiting, Betty reached out to TMJ4. The Lighthouse team called the roofing company. TMJ4 is choosing not to identify the company because in doing a background check, Lighthouse didn't find a pattern of negligence.
"I did call him and I asked him a lot of questions about why they hadn't been back to repair what they'd done," said Andrea Albers who spoke to the owner of the home improvement company.
"I'm very thankful," responded Betty.
Within 5 days of Andrea contacting the company, Betty's garage roof was replaced. "It should not have taken Channel 4 to call to get him off his behind and do something, otherwise he wouldn't have done it," said Betty in reaction.
Andrea wanted to make sure she did right by Betty, so she called a different roofing company in Milwaukee to check out the replacement roof.
"When you have shingles buckling immediately — that's a big problem," said Joe O'Brien. Joe owns Four Leaf, which has an A+ rating from the BBB and was just named the "Face of Roofing" by Milwaukee Magazine. He met Andrea outside Betty's garage.
"They didn't do it the right way, the craftsmanship is pretty poor," added Joe as
he quickly spotted several issues with the repair work. "If that were anybody working for us, they wouldn't be working the next day."
He went on to say that he was concerned with the durability of the repair and that the roof would likely begin leaking. That didn't sit right with Joe. So, he sent his crew over to Betty's to replace the entire garage roof for free.
"It's miraculous!" said Betty sanding next to Joe. "Words can not explain or express my appreciation," she said with a huge grin on her face.
"Well," responded Joe, "Good things happen to good people."
This is a unique situation, but if something similar ever happens to you do your best to document everything, communicate in writing with the contractor, and consider seeking legal advice to understand and protect your rights.
TMJ4 was happy to get results for Betty. Our lighthouse team isn't afraid to do some digging to get answers and hold people accountable. To see more of their content, and connect with the team, go to tmj4.com/lighthouse.
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