You hit the nail right on the head! Thank you very much.
I had it in the wrong hook. I moved it to the
member_execute_start hook it is working great now. I had to try a couple hooks to get it right but php didn't want to play nice with the hooks I tried first. I got a couple of DB errors. The last vb version I used before 3.7.0. beta 3 (and now beta 4), was 3.5.4. A lot of things have changed and been added since then, mostly for the good.
Thanks again for sticking with me on this and putting up with my noobiness. I really appreciate it.