/maliciousmonkey via Flickr
By Elizabeth Whitman | Phoenix New Times
If Arizona Public Service hadn’t cut off her electricity last September, Stephanie Pullman might still be alive today. On August 23, 2018, the utility mailed a warning letter to the 72-year-old’s home in Sun City West, where she lived with her cat, Cocoa. Pullman owed APS $176.84, it said. She had five days to pay in full. Otherwise, APS would disconnect the electricity. Outside, temperatures were in the triple digits.
Related: Corporation Commissioners request investigation into utility shutoff
Pullman lived on less than $1,000 a month in Social Security, according to one of her daughters, Jeanine Smith. Her children regularly chipped in to help with expenses. When their mother’s air conditioner broke in April 2018, they made sure it was fixed. Smith, who lives in Ohio, paid her mother’s phone bill; her sister, Chris Hotes, covered the internet.
Stephanie Pullman /Courtesy of Stephanie Pullman’s family
It wasn’t enough. Two days later, on September 7, APS disconnected her electricity. That day, temperatures hit at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit, instruments recorded in nearby Youngtown showed. Smith recalled it was 107 degrees.
One week later, alarmed that she and her sister hadn’t heard from their mother, Hotes called the Sun City West Posse, a local group that conducts wellness checks. The posse alerted people at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, who entered the house to find Pullman in her bed.
The house had no air conditioning, because it had no electricity. Pullman’s body was already decomposing, the coroner’s report said. The medical examiner wrote that her death occurred by “environmental heat exposure in setting of significant cardiovascular disease.”
People from the sheriff’s office noticed signs of a cat, but Cocoa was nowhere to be found.
