Sarah Heller on Mike Rinder

My name is Sarah Heller. I work in the Church’s External Affairs Office here in Clearwater, Florida.

I first met Mike Rinder fairly, when I was fairly new in the External Affairs Office. I came in to the office and there was this man that was, I hadn’t seen before who was in the main office and was, had basically taken over somebody else’s desk, one of the main desks there.

Within a day or so, I observed that basically he seemed to be essentially sitting there, not doing a whole lot and, believe it or not, literally in the middle of our office, sitting on his computer playing solitaire most of the time. So, that was my first introduction to him.

Mike Rinder’s family is from Melbourne, Australia. My family, my mother’s family is also from Melbourne. And the families have known each other through many generations. Mike’s mother knew my grandmother very well and through the generations. And so when Barbara, Mike’s mother, would come here to Clearwater for services, she always made a point of calling me up and calling my mother up, you know, hoping to run into us at some point during her trip. And we would, you know, try and do that.

And one time in particular that I remember, I actually ran into Barbara on the street, on Cleveland Street, right outside the Clearwater Building. Mike was in the conference room on the ground floor, right inside the building. If he had looked up and looked out the window, he would have seen me talking to his mother. And she was obviously very pleasant and saying, “Oh, hello, Sarah. How are you?” You know, we had a two-minute conversation or something. And it was clear to me that she didn’t know that Mike was here and Mike made no attempt to reach out to her. And considering she was in Clearwater from Australia, and he was here, just from a family perspective, I would have expected that he would have at least said hello to his own mother. And so that’s something that kind of stuck with me.

Several years later, my mother told me that Barbara was not doing well and wasn’t expected to live much longer. So I called her in Australia just to basically say goodbye and let her know that I really appreciated her, and the short times that we had spoken, and she was a wonderful and amazing lady.

But the thing that upset me the most was that, that was at the exact, or right around the same time, that Mike Rinder decided to start attacking the Church. And the fact that he would do that and attack the Church and something his mother and the rest of his family believed so much in, that he would do that to his own family on top of all other reasons was just—exposed to me what a vile person he is.