Don Chavez

Meet Dennis Paiva, the man who stole Tom Brady’s $8,000 flower boxes, scrapped them for $450, was order to repay Brady $4,000 in restitution, then had a brain aneurysm and now panhandles to pay the Brady back.

Here’s the story: Paiva got out of jail five years ago and after serving his time, tried to go on the straight and narrow. He took odd jobs and had a side gig as a trash picker.

“I would go out the night before the trash got picked up and see what people put out. If there was anything good, I would take it and sell it,” he explained.

Of course, as Paiva explains it, he always found better stuff in the ritzier neighborhoods, so one night last fall he found himself in an alley in the Back Bay checking the discards.

“I saw these two stainless steel metal containers behind a garage next to the trash,” Paiva said. “Scrap metal was really high at the time so I grabbed them and put them in my truck.”

Okay, so the Denny was treasure hunting in Back Bay, near some high end houses. I applaud him on his choice of a work venue.

Paiva took the planters to a scrapyard in Everett, collected $450 and was feeling pretty good about life. Right up until he got a call from a Boston police detective.

“The guy mentions I took some flower pots,” Paiva recalled. “I said,‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He said, ‘We got you on the security camera.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I took them, but they were out with the trash.’ He said, ‘You gotta get them back. You don’t even want to know who they belong to!’ ”

$450? Forget about the Internet, I’m obviously in the wrong business. I wonder what I can get for my collection of 2,324 Skoal Mint lids?

“I said, ‘You’re kidding me, they were in the trash!’ ” Paiva said. “The police talked to the people in the building and they said that deliverymen had left the planters in the back because there was no one home. Everyone agreed it was a mistake.”

Hold your horses. Right there Denny is off the hook. Anyone with common sense would make the delivery guy pay for putting the flower boxes with the trash. And what’s this nobody was home bull shit? What, was Tom Brady going to answer the door, thank the delivery man for bringing him his new flower boxes, then go and install the flower boxes himself? Fuck no. Brady has people who do that mundane shit for him. Brady’s only job right now is to keep Giselle on her back and to win the Super Bowl. That’s it.

But as for Denny, the guy sounds like he’s legit. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that trash pickers are some of the most honorable people I’ve ever met. 99% of the time if they see something that looks like it was accidentally thrown away, they go up to the home owner and double check with them to see if they’re sure they want to junk it. Also, in towns like Gloucester, MA they’ll even help you out by knocking up your teenage daughter.

Like I said, these are honorable people.

It’s called bad Karma – Boston Herald

P.S. It’s about time those tramps at the Herald actually wrote up a story that wasn’t published on a blog a week ago.