HOA Fined Me for Snow Tire Tracks — So I Stopped Plowing the Only Road They Had…
They find me for saving their lives. Yeah, that’s how this all started. My crime. Apparently, the tracks my snowplow left behind where some kind of unauthorized tire damage. Makes you wonder if common sense just freezes up and dies at high altitude or maybe it’s the altitude that gets to people’s brains.
Either way, that road, the one curling up the side of this little Wyoming canyon town, was the only shot in or out. And for years, I cleared it after every storm. never took a penny, never asked for a thank you. Then one day, the folks running our HOA decided their sense of control was more important than anyone’s safety.
So, I did the only thing that made sense. I stopped. And man, did the snow come to collect. You ever watch an ambulance stuck behind a wall of white lights spinning hope draining out as quick as the gas tank? The whole town started to panic. And underneath all that snow, you know what really got buried? the truth.
Hidden away in contracts that weren’t real companies that didn’t exist, and HOA money vanishing into thin air. But I’ll bet you they had no idea who they were picking a fight with. Here’s how I cracked open the rotten core they’d been hiding. How I proved that no storm, no matter how cold, can freeze out the truth for good. My name’s Dale Mercer.
I got fined for tire tracks. Here’s how that turned out. First thing, you got to picture the ticket. bright orange crooked stuck to my front door, dripping wet from the snow melt off the eaves. The kind of thing that lets you know you’re not wanted before you even read a word. Just stood there staring at it. For a second, nothing in my head but the wind twisting through the pine trees outside.
Violation 14. C. Unauthorized tire damage to snow covered common property. Fine, $430. Tire damage, not life-saving access, not clearing the road so your grandma doesn’t die of hypothermia, just damage. I live at the bottom of a narrow canyon out in western Wyoming. There’s only one road in, one out.
A skinny little gravel pass running three miles through HOA land before you even hit pavement. Come winter, if you’re not ahead of the snow, you might as well board up the windows and wait for spring. The county won’t plow here. Never have. It’s always been me. Me and my old 89 international battered patch together just like me. After every storm, I’d fire her up, trundle down the road, clear a path.
Not because anyone asked, not because anyone paid. Because I knew what happened if someone’s wife started labor early or a chimney caught fire and the trucks couldn’t get through. But I never saw this coming. Never thought they’d find me for it. So, I peeled that notice off my door, looked across the road.
There’s the Grand Hollow Ridge HOA headquarters. If you could call that beige windowless thing a headquarters security camera blinking red at me, oneeyed and smug. Instead of a thank you instead of a knock, I get this. And you know the funny thing, there was no damage. The only tracks out there were from my own truck chains barely brushing the ice. No ruts, no torn up gravel.
But the board had voted to maintain snow in its natural state until their official contractor, some guy I’d never even seen, could get out here because I’d beaten him to it. I was the problem. That’s when I realized it’s not about snow, it’s about control. So, I did what you’d probably do. sat down at my kitchen table ticket in one hand, half cold coffee in the other, floor still wet from where I’d tracked in at 5:00 a.m.
My thermal steaming, the radio crackling, warning another front was pushing in by midnight. $430. They thought that would break me. They didn’t know who I was before I moved up here. Back then, I worked fraud investigations for the state of Colorado. Contract compliance, public works, the kind of job that makes you cynical if you weren’t already.
I’d seen folks go to jail for less than what I was starting to suspect the Grand Hollow Ridge Board was up to. But that morning, I didn’t reach for my old badge. I reached for something colder. I got up, went out to the shed. My plow, Maggie, I call her, sat there, engine cold. I didn’t start her up. Just watch the road, the one that wasn’t getting plowed that day. That was the call.
If they didn’t want my help, let the guy they loved so much come handle it. Let them feel what winter really means when no one’s looking out for them. By 10:00 a.m., snow started again. By noon, I heard tires spinning out by the marshall’s old gate. By sundown, you couldn’t see the road anymore. Drifts high enough to swallow a grown man.
I left the plow parked. Didn’t touch it. That night, the HOA emailed everyone. Due to unauthorized snow removal causing undue surface disruption, plowing will resume once conditions stabilize. Please do not interfere. Safety is our priority. Safety, huh? They cut off the only way into town right in the middle of a blizzard.
First calls came in from Eric down the hill. His wife’s got aprenatal appointment tomorrow worried sick. Then Marcy, two doors down, her mom’s on oxygen. I told them both I’m standing down. You could hear the shock in their voices, but I made sure they understood I got fined for doing the right thing. Let the HOA handle it. Next morning, power lines, iced up transformers, hissing snow still falling.
I just sat, watched the world get buried. Same yellow legal pad I’d used to diagram fraud rings in Boulder, now on my table. First entry wasn’t a photo. It was that orange citation timestamped and signed by Cheryl Mantel board secretary. That went on the first page of a much bigger case file than she’d ever dreamed. If they were making it personal, I was going to make it legal.
Day after day, I didn’t touch the plow. drifts like cement mailboxes buried. I waited. I figured someone from the board would call apologize, ask me to come out. Nope. Instead, second notice this time, a cease and desist. Repeated violations. Unauthorized use of heavy equipment. They even attached drone footage. My red coat behind the windshield at dawn. Clear as day.
I printed it, labeled it exhibit A. Third day, the official contractor finally tried to show up. Young guy pickup truck, homemade plow blade. He couldn’t even get through the first 100 feet. Sat there, lights spinning, engine roaring, then backed down and disappeared. Sure enough, HOA posted online due to extreme conditions. Snow services delayed.
Stay indoors. Authorities notified. Authorities. There weren’t any. The county had no say here, and I knew how these HOA snow contracts usually worked because I’d reviewed plenty of them. Most are boilerplate, but this one, this one was going to tell me more. But first, I wanted them to sweat. Day four ambulance tried to get through Marcy’s mother coughing up blood.
Didn’t make it far. Had to get pulled out by a rancher’s tow hitch. She survived barely. Next morning, I had four voicemails, some angry, some desperate. Why wasn’t I helping? Here’s the answer in case you ever wonder. When people like Cheryl get a taste of unchecked power today, it’s a snowplow ticket.
Tomorrow it’s a lean on your home. I’d seen it before. Day five, the HOA called a virtual board meeting. I logged in, camera off sound, muted, just listened. Cheryl bragging about rogue actors and loss of control. That’s what I was now, a rogue actor. After seven winters clearing their road for free, I hit record. Exhibit B.
Then I got to work. Dug up last year’s snow service invoice, $42,750. Same contractor, same amateur operation. Never once saw a real plow. So, I started digging. compared their contract price to local rates. Looked for a forensic pattern, something hard. Day six. Cheryl herself walked up my drive. Pearl earrings, pink coat, clipboard.
Didn’t even knock. Just circled Maggie snapping pictures. I filmed her through the curtains. 30 seconds, no sound. She had no idea how deep my file already was. Emails, timestamps, witnesses, snow. So much snow. By now, the road wasn’t even a road. A glacier, maybe. Nobody drove. Nobody walked. The silence started to build, not just outside, but in people’s voices on the phone.
They weren’t mad now. They were scared. Eric’s wife missed her second appointment. SUV stuck behind the cattlegate. She cried when she called. “I’m scared, Dale.” “Me, too,” I told her. “Not of the snow, of how long the board would let this go.” Then the sirens came echoing up the canyon. I stepped out wind biting my face white out all around.
There it was, a rescue truck stuck, light spinning, going nowhere. Called 911 myself. Ambulance is stuck on Hollow Ridge Access Road. No plow for 8 days. Dispatch told me we’ve been informed the area is managed by a private HOA. We’re limited without local support. Translation, they meant me. B. That ambulance wasn’t for Marcy’s mother this time.
It was headed to the Henderson’s Jason father of three diabetic. Collapsed at breakfast. Paramedics stranded in the snow. That was the line. I couldn’t let this go anymore. I pulled the HOA charter from 2015, the one most folks never read. Buried on page 17. In emergency where access is delayed, board must defer to available community resources to ensure safety. That was it.
Their cease and desist was legally void the moment lives were at risk. So, I took a photo clause highlighted timestamped ambulance in the background. Sent it to every resident subject line. You have rights. She’s violating them. Then I waited. Calls started neighbors I barely knew. Furious now, some demanding Cheryl step down.
But before anything else, we had to clear the road. So, I climbed into Maggie, fired her up 5 hours straight, blade down, clearing snow and ice. When I was done, the ambulance made it through. Jason lived. Cheryl didn’t say a word, but I knew she’d try to spin it. So before she could, I called the County Fire District State Board of Nonprofit Accountability.
If I was plowing, I was bulldozing her whole operation. Thestorm kept coming. Pipes, burst, fires, flared up, road barely passable. Maggie was running out of steam. I couldn’t do it alone. That’s when I went to the local paper. I knew a reporter, Carla. Sent her everything. Fines, emails, board quotes, drone shots, contract breakdowns. Her math didn’t lie.
Our HOA was paying triple for half the service. Dale, this smells like fraud, she said. You think the board president’s in on it? I think she’s related to the contractor, I said. She started digging. Meanwhile, the story went front page. But then it got personal. My niece, Becca, tried to bring me supplies, skidded off the road, stranded, freezing in her car, her voice shaking.
Uncle Dale, I can’t get out. I got her home, but all I could think was, “What if she’d lost her battery?” That’s when I knew the story wasn’t just about Snow. It was about who gets rescued and who gets left behind. So, I went full investigator, pulled business records, found the connection, Cheryl awarding contracts to her own cousin Todd through a shell company.
Payments, double sign checks, all HOA money funneled into one fake LLC. called Carla, called my lawyer. Clarence built a packet of everything. Surveillance contracts, invoices, witness statements, even drone footage. We filed for an audit. Three resident co-signers. Sent it all to the county. Turns out Todd had a second company servicing another HOA run by Cheryl’s sister.
This was organized fraud, plain and simple, across multiple communities. I called Becca. She worked admin at the county. Who handles HOA audits? Patrick Reyes, she said, “Send it now.” By Friday, the audit was underway. By Sunday, the paper ran a headline. HOA under fire for fraudulent snow contracts. Carla didn’t pull punches. The best part, residents from other HOAs started emailing, “How do I file for an audit? How do I protect our rights?” That’s when I realized this wasn’t just about our little canyon.
This was everywhere. So, I built a toolkit, made it free. Red flag lists, templates, the works. Because sunlight’s meant to be shared. When the county investigation landed, it landed hard. $71,000 in fake services checks signed off by Cheryl, all routed to her cousin’s shell companies. They froze the HOA accounts launched a full forensic review.
Cheryl tried to shred records. Board members started quitting, but it was too late. The truth was out. One cold February night, the whole town showed up for the hearing. not for a barbecue or a holiday, but to finally take back what was theirs. Janine, the county clerk, read the charges out. One by one, neighbors stood up, told their stories.
Ambulances, delayed money, stolen trust broken. Greg, the ex-board member, admitted he never asked enough questions. Eric, the guy who once told his wife I should just plow and move on locked eyes with me, and said we were all being robbed, and while we were getting robbed, Dale was digging us out. That night, they nominated seven regular folks to run the HOA, teachers, mechanics, a nurse.
No more closed doors, no more secrets. And when the judge ordered Cheryl and Todd to pay restitution, nearly 60 grand, and banned them from ever serving on an HOA board again, the feeling wasn’t fireworks. It was quiet, slow, like the sun coming up after a long, dark winter. I still take Maggie out sometimes, just for the peace of it.
The board pays for proper plowing now, but I’ll be damned if I ever see that road vanish under snow again. That strip of gravel, it’s more than a road. It’s the line we crossed from silence to truth. And now I’ve got a question for you. Yeah, you sitting there thinking that could never happen where I live.
