Find a way to test his honesty before he has access to valuable assets.
Good idea. We have a Haitian caretaker for our house and property, one of my brother-in-laws brought him to us from Bavaro about 5 years ago. I was leery for a long time, and the 'neighbors' in the campo didn't take to him, they were actually afraid of him because he's Haitian and they thought he was going to do voodoo on them (I swear!!). Long story short, my very shrewd 80+ year old mother-in-law spends a lot of time at that house to get away from the city. For a long time - over a year - she would leave cash (sometimes bills, sometimes change) and other small items around the house, including jewelry, when he was there. Gave him every opportunity to take it. She'd leave and go visit a neighbor for an hour. Every time she returned he would come to her and give her whatever it was and admonish her to be more careful because 'people around here steal'. Today he has keys to our house, and we don't worry a bit. And I kind of like the fact that the neighbors are afraid of him :squareeye And my mother-in-law still 'tests' him from time to time. :ermm:
You have to be SO careful. When I go to DR I leave most all of my jewelry home and only wear a plain wedding band and earrings - maybe one bracelet but usually none, and I leave my gold watch home and wear a cheapie one. I don't like to ask for trouble wearing nice jewelry, because we're not tourists in hotels, we're out there with the regular folks. One year we got out to our house and opened it up, and it needed cleaning. A woman we know for years from across the road came over like she always did and asked if we wanted it cleaned and we said yes. I had washed my hands in the bathroom and removed the watch, and forgot it on the sink while we went to the store. In an instant that watch was gone, never to be seen again. Naturally she denied seeing or touching it. We've never had her in the house again. Taking that $20 watch cost her a long-time job - and we're lucky that's all it was that she took. The Haitian fellow would have put it someplace safe and given it to me when I got back.
I don't know what we pay him, my (Dominican) husband takes care of that, but I'm sure it's in the same range as what we paid the Dominican before him.