SAN FRANCISCO _ Looking back, Pamela Buttery can recall an early clue that something could be amiss at the luxury high-rise where she's lived for the past six years.
A golfer, she sometimes practiced her putting indoors, tapping the ball toward a portable cup on the hardwood floor in her living room.
If Buttery missed, the ball would carom off the wall and strangely change course, swerving right and gaining momentum as it rolled toward the northwest corner of her condo. At which point, she said, her cat Maximus would "go racing after the ball."
It became a game between them, but it also presaged what in the past several months has become a sobering reality for the retired real estate developer and other residents of the 58-story Millennium Tower:
The tower is sinking _ 16 inches so far, with projections that the amount could double over time.
And as it sinks, the building also has begun to list ever so slightly _ an estimated 2 to 4 inches at the structure's base and 14 inches at the top, where Buttery's unit sits at the northwest corner of the next-to-highest floor.
"The more it sinks unevenly, the more it is going to tilt," Buttery has been told.
Is she nervous?
"I am not so much nervous as I am distressed," the 76-year-old London native said. "This is not going to be fixed in my lifetime, and it is distressing to not know where I am going to live, and die, basically."
