Evicted California 100-Year-Old Gets a New Home

A 100-year-old woman evicted from her apartment has a new home in the Southern California desert after a newspaper reported on her plight and motivational speaker Tony Robbins and a local congressman joined in helping her, the AP reports. Evelyn Heller represented herself in a trial in which her Palm Desert landlord sought her eviction on grounds she had loud, disruptive arguments with one of her daughters, the Desert Sun reports. Heller, who can hardly see or hear, lost on April 1 and was ordered to pay more than $1,500 in court costs, attorney's fees, and prorated rent. The Desert Sun ran a front-page story on her the next day, catching the eye of Robbins and Rep. Raul Ruiz, who contacted the paper and got in touch with Heller.

Ruiz sent social workers to help Heller find a new apartment, and Robbins donated $24,000—$1,000 a month for two years. She now lives in La Quinta, where Ruiz, his wife, and Robbins visited her Friday. "That's wonderful!" Heller said when Ruiz and his wife came in with homemade chicken noodle soup. When Robbins arrived, she quipped, "Oh, there's that man again. Don't tell your wife about us." Chatting over the next 20 minutes, Heller divulged her crush on President Obama and her early hunch that Taylor Swift was going to be famous. "I don't know how anyone my age can have a bigger day than today," she said. "I just don't know how. I don't think I've talked this much in five years." (More centenarians stories.)