TINA SCOTT

Her burden doubles, but she’s ‘not fretting or regretting’

By LESLIE GRAY STREETER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Spring 2008 was supposed to be the beginning of Sharelle Scott’s new life, not the end of it.
The 26-year-old single mother of three, who’d had lupus since she was a teen, was finally leaving Miami, where she supported her family by working at McDonald’s. She was moving to the Riviera Beach home of her aunt, Tina Scott. It was going to be cramped, the four of them bunking with Tina and three of her six kids, but they’d be away from Sharelle’s drug-addicted brother.
“We were gonna all live in this house and be happy,” Tina remembers. And six months later, everyone’s still there — everyone but Sharelle, who had been in her new home for just 15 minutes before being rushed, weak, to Columbia Hospital.
She died before she’d see that home again, but not before leaving her aunt power of attorney over 8-year-old Armond, 2-year-old Shariah and 8-month-old Neveah.
“I think she knew she was leaving them with me,” says Tina , 38, an overnight clerk at a 24-hour Walgreens, who had no idea of the problems her new charges faced. Infant Neveah (Heaven spelled backwards) has gastrointestinal issues that make her frail body unable to keep down food. Little Shariah has heart and kidney problems and wears a shunt in her head to drain the fluid caused by hydroencephalitis. And Armond’s so heartbroken and angry over his mother’s death that, to this day, he can’t bring himself to visit her grave.
But Auntie Tina, who became their legal guardian because no other family members were willing to take all three, is making it work, even without the government support she’d receive if she quit her job. “I can’t do that,” she says.
So she cheerfully shuttles everybody in the 1996 Ford Explorer with the busted air conditioning, windows that won’t move unless you push on them, and the back seat worn bare to the foam padding, that won’t accommodate Shariah and Neveah’s car seats. She pays friends $120 round-trip to transport them to Miami, to see the girls’ doctors. She stretches her paycheck to feed seven people.
And when she comes home from her overnight shift to relieve her 22-year-old daughter, who watches the kids, Tina doesn’t collapse onto her mattress until she makes a breakfast on the stove that has one working burner.
Auntie Tina does not complain — “I’m not fretting or regretting anything,” she says. And when she visits Sharelle at her grave, whose headstone Tina is still paying for, “I ask her, ‘Tell me what you need me to do.’”
Because she knows Sharelle lived just long enough to get her babies to their new home. The rest is up to her.

THE SCOTTS’ WISH: The family desperately needs a new or gently used vehicle large enough to accommodate everyone, including the girls’ car seats, as well as gas cards to help them get to the kids’ doctors appointments in Miami. They currently dry their laundry by hanging it on the love seat, so they’d like a new washer/dryer, as well as a refrigerator, stove and vacuum cleaner. The girls need a dresser so they don’t have to keep their clothes on the floor, and they could all use new beds. The older two children would love to have bicycles, and Tina needs almost $900 more to finish paying for her late niece’s headstone.

Nominated by: Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, Inc., 423 Fern St., Suite 200, West Palm Beach, Fl. 33401 (561) 655-8944.

UPDATE

Tina Scott, a single mother left to care for her late niece’s three grieving and medically needy children, now has evidence of celestial beings.

“It’s been such a blessing. These are all God’s angels working for my niece,” the Walgreens night clerk says of the people who’ve donated scores of needed items, as well as more than $7,000 in cash, for her family.

Scott, nominated by the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, received a trundle bed for her nephew; two beds from City Mattress, including one to replace the mattress propped on cinder block that she sleeps on; a washer, dryer, stove and refrigerator; two dressers; a child’s desk; a 32-inch television and stand; a stereo system and a recliner.

And the family had a tree and ornaments, thanks to a donor. “My niece saw that tree with all the lights on it and said, ‘We tree! We tree!’” Scott reports.

Scott is grateful to be able to provide for her family. “It’s so nice to go from not having enough, to saying ‘You can have seconds!’”