ELIZABETH VALDEZ

Sick and weak, mom fears for children’s future

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010

Elizabeth and Luis Valdez of Lake Worth, parents of four children, had been struggling financially and emotionally since Elizabeth underwent surgery to remove her kidney and gall bladder last year.

The community’s donations will allow the family to catch up on bills and purchase a used car, says Barbara Vilaseca, executive director of The Caridad Center in Boynton Beach, the agency that nominated the Valdez family.

“She is extremely grateful and happy,” says Vilaseca. “She has been through hell and now she is receiving these wonderful blessings.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

By CARLOS FRÍAS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Halfway down a dimly lit street marked “dead end,” among rows of multi-family homes, Elizabeth and Luis Valdez whisper quietly in the dark, hoping for a miracle.

Their apartment darkens with nightfall, the lights turned off to save electricity. Only fluttering candles to various saints in one corner of the living room illuminate Elizabeth’s face as she recounts the story of a family living on the edge, of a woman who fears her cancer will leave her four children without a mother.

Until two years ago, Elizabeth and Luis had managed to make ends meet, if barely, by picking tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in county fields. But then the baby started kicking and a paralyzing pain shot through Elizabeth’s abdomen.

One doctor told her it was just the baby in an awkward position. Elizabeth continued working in the fields until her ninth month, and it was only after the baby was born that doctors realized there was something very wrong with her. There was a dark spot over her right kidney in the X-rays, a cancerous shadow that signaled life was about to change.

Elizabeth and her husband tried to keep the news from their children. Only when they thought the kids were asleep would they lie in bed and sob through whispers about the misdiagnoses that delayed Elizabeth’s treatment for 20 months.

Daughter Lizbeth, 9, learned the truth when she overheard them one night. Her grades began to slip. School officials called in the Valdezes for a chat. There, Lizbeth turned to her mother and revealed why she had lost all desire to learn.

“I just don’t know what we’re going to do when you die,” said the girl.

Thanks to the Caridad Center in suburban Boynton Beach, which helps the family with some medical expenses, Elizabeth had lifesaving surgery to remove her kidney and gallbladder in late September.

But the procedure has left her fragile and unable to work. As the family teeters on the brink, Luis waits in the day laborer pool for stray gigs.

Still, Elizabeth allows herself to dream for her children: may they one day have careers that will give them better lives.

“We have to give thanks to God,” she tells them. “There are others who are worse off than us.”

ELIZABETH VALDEZ’S WISH

Elizabeth Valdez’s family was dealt a serious blow when she developed kidney cancer. The mother of four cannot work in her fragile state. Her family has no car, is behind on rent and bills, and often relies on the charity of neighbors. The Valdezes would like money to help purchase a car so dad Luis, a day laborer, can drive to better employment. They need groceries, clothing, and cash or gift cards, and the children would love toys. The 14-year-old boy, Luis Jr., loves the New England Patriots football team and soccer; Lizbeth, 9, and Lesley, 5, love Bratz dolls. And Eric, 2, loves Spider-Man.

LYNDA FERGUSON

Early-onset Alzheimer’s sends family into tailspin

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010

In the grip of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Lynda Ferguson once spent her waking hours detached from the world around her. But in recent weeks, a bright new world has opened up for this 45-year-old grandmother.

Thanks to the generosity of Palm Beach Post readers who contributed to the 2009 Season to Share holiday drive, Ferguson is attending the Alzheimer’s Community Care Center in Riviera Beach, where she’s tried out Wii bowling, as well as other physical and cognitive activities.

“She’s smiling. She looks great. … She tries to be involved in whatever is going on in the room,” says Joan Reedy, grants administrator for Alzheimer’s Community Care, the agency that nominated Ferguson for The Post’s annual Season to Share drive.

This year’s drive, which featured 14 local nominees, brought in $624,999.81, a remarkable sum in a year when charities have struggled across the country to raise funds. The outpouring of community support will benefit not only the nominees and their agencies, but other families in need as well. In addition, the Quantum Foundation has matched individual gifts of $50 to $500.

At Alzheimer’s Community Care, this year’s donations will pay for a full year of day care for Ferguson, as well as benefit another wait-listed patient, says Reedy.

At $55 per day, the center had been out of reach for Ferguson’s caregivers, her elderly parents who support the family on meager Social Security checks.

“This has been a godsend for this family,” says Reedy.

It is a sentiment echoed by Ferguson’s mother, Frances Powell, a 66-year-old heart patient who had her fourth pacemaker installed last year. She drives her daughter to the day care center each weekday morning and picks her up in the late afternoon.

“She doesn’t understand a lot of things going on, but I see she greets everyone over there,” says Ferguson’s mother. “It’s a relief for me.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

By BARBARA MARSHALL
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The pretty woman in the flowered dress nods happily when her name is mentioned, but her gaze is vacant, her face uncomprehending.

Just 45, Lynda Ferguson, is slipping away, her memories being obliterated by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Each day, her family loses a bit more of the once-vital woman who loved nice clothes, high heels and life itself.

“She was wise and confident — she was my best friend — but it’s not my mom in here anymore,” said her daughter, Alexia, laying a protective hand on her mother’s shoulder.

And Alexia, 23, could use her mom right now. She has a 9-month old daughter, Jordin, and is attending medical assistant’s school.

At first Alexia and her grandmother, Frances Powell, Lynda’s mother, refused to believe someone so young could have Alzheimer’s. But uncontrolled high blood pressure caused a series of mini-strokes, which destroyed parts of Lynda’s brain.

A former home health care aide, Lynda began wandering late at night. Several times, Alexia had to call the police to search for her. In desperation, Alexia moved the three of them into her grandparents’ Riviera Beach home. Four generations are crowded in a little house, freshly painted the color of a creamsicle.

Inside, there is plenty of love — and worry.

Lynda’s father, James, is retired and helps when he can. But the burden of caring for Lynda and baby Jordin falls to Frances, 66, a heart patient who recently had her fourth pacemaker installed.

Although 45 years apart, Lynda and her granddaughter require similar care in bathing, feeding and dressing.

“It’s like taking care of two kids,” said Frances, who is straining her already fragile health — and her meager Social Security checks.

Lynda could get specialized care at the Alzheimer’s Community Care Center in Riviera Beach, which may slow the progress of her disease. But the family can’t afford the $55-a-day fee. Lynda’s $708 monthly Social Security disability payments don’t even cover her medicine.

Because she was stricken so young, Lynda doesn’t qualify for government Alzheimer’s aid, which applies only to those 60 and over. Day care also would allow the family to keep Lynda at home, instead of having to do the unthinkable: Send this once-spirited daughter to a nursing home.

LYNDA FERGUSON’S WISH

Stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease after a series of strokes, 45-year-old Lynda Ferguson needs funding for Alzheimer’s day care. A donation of $28,840 would allow Lynda to take part in a specialized program so her family could keep her at home. It would also cover the cost of some of her medicines.

Her mother, who has serious heart disease, is caring for Lynda, as well as Lynda’s 9-month-old granddaughter, but can’t continue. The baby’s mother, Alexia, is attending school. At present, four generations are living in the family’s Riviera Beach house, where the only income is the grandparents’ Social Security and Lynda’s small disability check.

ANGELO SINRAM-GIUSTINO

Resilient family needs gas cards to reach doctor’s

By ALLISON ROSS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Most days, Angelo Sinram-Giustino is like any other inquisitive, active 7-year-old boy.

It’s hard to notice the tremors in his hands that are a byproduct of his hydrocephalus, a condition known as “water on the brain.” Looking at him, there’s no way to tell he didn’t learn to walk until he was 4.

Like many kids his age, he loves kickball and searching for lizards or creating colorful drawings to stick on the family’s refrigerator. But he doesn’t mind playing dolls with his 3-year-old sister, Victoria. He’s the kind of kid who is so close with his brother, Giovanni, 9, that the two sleep in the same bedroom despite having separate rooms.

So his mother, Stacey Sinram, began to worry when she noticed Angelo began acting aggressive and ill-tempered last May.

A trip to Angelo’s neurosurgeon in Orlando confirmed it: The shunt in his head that was supposed to drain excess fluid had malfunctioned and a new shunt was needed.

“I guess we knew it was a possibility that he would need a new shunt or that some problem would come up,” says Stacey, whose son was diagnosed when he was 15 months old, “but all those years, we got comfortable.”

The complication couldn’t have come at a worse time for the family of five. Stacey’s husband, a woodworker, has been struggling to find work.

“I’ve always had a stable job,” Dale Giustino said. “Now it’s all different. The housing market has collapsed. Everything’s falling apart.”

Angelo’s medical procedures are covered by insurance, but because his neurosurgeon is in Orlando, the family has to scrape together money for travel expenses. Sometimes they can stay at the Ronald McDonald House, but other times they have to pay for a hotel.

The family cannot afford to pay rent on their Jensen Beach home. Dale’s mother, who owns the house, tried to keep up with mortgage payments, but the house is now in early stages of foreclosure.

Stacey is also looking for work, but she’s had no luck.

“Stacey’s such a strong advocate for her family and for her son,” said Diane Tomasik of House of Hope, which has helped the family twice pay their electricity bills. “They’re resilient, and they’ll do what they need to in order to keep their son well and keep their heads above water.”

ANGELO SINRAM-GIUSTINO’S WISH

Angelo Sinram-Giustino, age 7, was diagnosed with hydrocephalus — “water on the brain” — when he was 15 months old. This June, the shunt in his brain used to drain the excessive fluid malfunctioned, and a new one had to be inserted. His family has to drive to Orlando regularly to see Angelo’s doctor, but money is tight because his parents are struggling to find enough money to support their family of five.

Angelo and his siblings have outgrown their clothes and could use new ones. He could also use a new bed, for he has outgrown his old one. The family would greatly benefit from gas cards to help pay travel expenses to Orlando, where Angelo’s neurosurgeon is based, and new tires for their 2000 Ford Expedition. They could also use gift cards for groceries and a computer for the children to use for schoolwork.

SAL DINUCCI

Disasters pile up, but nothing keeps DiNucci down

By KATIE McBROOM
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Salvatore DiNucci, 32, has never known life outside a wheelchair. He was born with spina bifida, a birth defect that renders him immobile from the waist down.

Sal has struggled all his life, but never as much as in this past year when a domino effect of tragic events hit his family hard.

In August, the DiNuccis’ livelihood was shattered when a car plummeted through the family restaurant, Giovanni’s Café in Deerfield Beach. The vehicle, commanded by a disoriented elderly driver, wrecked everything in its path. The loss of the family business added to the pile of medical bills from Sal’s recent hospitalizations.

“I used to look at homeless people and wonder how they ended up out on the streets,” says Sal’s mother, Pam DiNucci. “Now I know.”

The family’s attempts to rebuild the restaurant have failed. They lost their home to foreclosure and were forced to move to smaller quarters last month. Insufficient funds forced the DiNuccis to leave behind equipment essential to Sal’s care: two wheelchair ramps and two Hoyer lifts required to carry him to his bed, toilet and shower.

Sal has outgrown his wheelchair, but a new one is not in the family’s budget. And, to make things worse, his mother’s only means of transportation is breaking down.

“My biggest fear is that I’ll stall out on the highway with Sal in the car, but I just can’t afford another van right now,” she says.

Although their world seems to be unraveling, Sal refuses to lose faith.

“His positive attitude is infectious,” said Walter McDonald, production supervisor at the Habilitation Center in Boca Raton where Sal works part time each week.

Sal has attended the Adult Day Training Program at the Habilitation Center, an agency devoted to adults with special needs, since 1999. There, he teaches computer courses. He and his family may be struggling to survive, but he’s not going down without a fight.

“Nothing holds me back,” said Sal, who has taken a second job at TJ Maxx to help pay bills.

His mother cleans houses, struggling to balance work with her demanding schedule caring for Sal. But she has no choice — the family doesn’t earn enough to cover expenses.

“It’s hard, but that’s life,” she said. “You go on.”

SAL DINUCCI’S WISH

Sal, who has outgrown his wheelchair, needs a chair to fit his size. He also needs to have two Hoyer lifts and two wheelchair ramps removed from his family’s old home and reinstalled in the new home. His mother needs a reliable van, large enough to accommodate Sal’s wheelchair, to transport him to and from work — the family’s current van is in bad shape. The DiNuccis currently share one cellphone and would like additional phones in the event of an emergency.

HALEY SMITH

Rare genetic defect pits family against obstacles

By AIME DUNSTAN
Special to the Palm Beach Post

Elisa and Craig Smith’s house is a happy house, a three-bedroom ranch in suburban Lake Worth filled with music and piles of pretty pink playthings for their three little girls.

“Craig likes to play the bongos,” 4-year-old Chloe says of her stepfather, who’s grooving with 5-month-old baby Kailyn in a rocker near the kitchen table. “I like to play the xylophone.”

Baby Kailyn lets out a giggle and waves a pudgy fist. Mama Elisa is getting ready for dinner, saucepan in one hand and cellphone in the other, stopping to retrieve Piglet the pit bull, who’s made another great escape from the back yard.

Organized chaos, they call it.

But Craig’s daughter Haley, 5, isn’t tumbling or telling stories. She sits in a wheelchair, eyes glazed over, as shapes move on a nearby TV screen. She was born with a rare genetic defect, agenesis of the corpus callosum, which prevents communication between the left and right hemispheres of her brain. She spent her first eight months at Miami Children’s Hospital, where doctors said her life could end at any time. But it didn’t.

As Haley grew, she suffered from chronic pneumonia. Surgery helped, but left her with a feeding tube and a tracheotomy, so fluid could be suctioned from her lungs.

Haley is largely non-communicative, save for the occasional grunt or laugh. She has sleep apnea and requires a ventilator to breathe at night. Her complex medical care requires regular trips to a gastroenterologist, an endocrinologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, a pediatrician and a nutritionist, plus monthly trips to the hospital to flush her medication port.

When Haley was 2, her mother left. It was too much. Her father, Craig, a 40-year-old electrician, cared for Haley on his own for nearly a year before meeting Elisa.

“I felt really bad for his situation,” says Elisa, 30. “Chloe was only a year-and-a-half at the time. I figured it was a really good opportunity for Haley to be around a ‘normal’ child, and for Chloe to learn about children with special needs and disabilities.”

She moved to Lake Worth and took over full-time care of Haley. She and Craig were married in August 2008, and baby Kailyn came along the following June.

Medicaid covers most of Haley’s medical expenses, transportation to and from school and in-home nursing. But it is not enough — this fall, Craig was laid off.

Still, the beat goes on.

“We do everything like we’re a team,” says Elisa.

HALEY’S WISH

Craig and Elisa Smith would like 5-year-old Haley to sleep in a bed instead of a crib. This requires a lift system ($2,000) to help her in and out of bed, a tumble mat ($200) to protect her from falls, and computer adaptations ($500). A KidWalk Gait Mobility System ($5,000) would help Haley explore the house independently, and help her learn to walk on her own. The family also needs money to help cover accumulating medical expenses not covered by Medicaid ($4,000), as well as rent and utility bills ($3,000 per month) until Craig can find work.

MARGIE ROGERS

Health woes beset grandmother caring for 4 kids

By ANNE RODGERS
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Margie Rogers raised seven children, but when the time came that two of her grandchildren, Aaliyah and Jaylon, needed a stable home, she opened wide the doors of her home yet again. In addition, she became a foster parent to Shania, 10, and Dekevious, 11, when they were tiny, and legally adopted the children.

She cooked and cleaned and worked as a home health caregiver, living in the Stuart home she purchased in 1985, the year her husband died.

But things have changed dramatically for Margie, 73, and her family. In the past two years, she has had both a stroke and a heart attack. More recently, a second stroke left her with pain and weakness in her right leg and hand. Though she regained her speech fairly quickly, the physical exercises Margie does to regain mobility haven’t restored her strength.

So, the bills stack up and the house continues to deteriorate. The oven door hangs askew on its hinges, leaking heat when in use; duct tape holds the toilet seat together and the tank runs constantly; tile flooring is patchy and the kitchen cabinets need replacing.

Basics like school clothes for the kids and bed linens are also needed, and Medicaid doesn’t cover all of Margie’s medical expenses.

This grandmother would like to sign her kids up for after-school activities — Dekevious likes basketball; Shania would love to try out as a cheerleader; and Aaliyah, 12, is good at both football and track — but with only $1,000 a month of income, none can be spared for extracurricular sports.

Margie’s daughter, Wylene, comes from Hobe Sound most days to help her mom out, and Big Brothers Big Sisters provides mentors to three of the four Rogers kids.

“They take them out for lunch, like that,” Wylene said of the mentors, for whom she and her mom are grateful.

Margie hopes the kids soak up lessons on how to behave from their association with Big Brothers Big Sisters. She worries about negative influences on the kids, now that she can’t watch them as closely — and she worries, too, about what might happen if she weren’t around.

For now, she concentrates on small tasks: She can sort and fold the laundry, even if she’s not yet able to put it into the washer or dryer. She hopes to return to the kitchen soon, too. (“She used to roll that dough!” laughs Wylene.)

As a girl in South Carolina, Margie recalled Christmas gifts of “a doll baby and little dishes with fruit.” With help from Season to Share, she hopes to offer more to her own kids.

MARGIE ROGERS’ WISH

Margie Rogers, who cares for two grandchildren and two foster children whom she adopted, needs money for overdue medical and household bills, home repairs (including a new stove and kitchen cabinets) and a remodel of one bathroom. The family needs sheets, towels and school clothes for the kids, who are 10, 11, 12 and 14.

JOYCE FREEMAN

Fort Pierce family needs help to restore the garage

By LESLIE GRAY STREETER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

To most, Cynthia Johnson’s Fort Pierce home is a comfortable, brightly decorated haven of neatly displayed art and immaculate white tile. But for Cynthia’s mother, Joyce Freeman, this beautiful home is an obstacle course. Its narrow corners make it a struggle to navigate her large wheelchair.

None of the home’s small bedrooms will accommodate her chair, or the cumbersome mechanical lift that helps ease her frail body out of bed, or the portable commode that she must use because the wheelchair won’t fit into the bathrooms.

And so this once-vibrant woman, who worked in area fruit packing plants as a teen, raised a family and served as a teacher’s aide until felled by the first of several brain tumors nearly 20 years ago, resides in the only room large enough to accommodate all the devices needed to keep her mobile — the garage.

Freeman suffers from hydrocephaly, or fluid around the brain. Until five years ago, she lived in a nursing home, but as her condition worsened, doctors advised closer supervision.

“Four people around her at the nursing home died in a row,” Johnson says softly, as her mother sits nearby, dwarfed by the wheelchair. “I didn’t want my mom around that.”

Theirs is a tight-knit family. When Freeman’s daughter Katrina died in 2001 of complications from AIDS, Johnson and her sister Gayle Jones took in her kids, including Aquala Freeman, now a bubbly but non-verbal 22-year-old stricken with multiple sclerosis. They do this cheerfully. But it’s become a struggle now that Freeman needs so much help.

To get her into the garage, she must be wheeled through the laundry room, past the washer and dryer, backed up slowly into a corner, then maneuvered down a wooden ramp that has started to give under the weight of the chair. The chair then glides over the rough floor of the garage to the bed. Family photos adorn her dresser, making it as homey as possible.

But all of the photos in the world can’t disguise the fact that this strong woman, who gave so much of herself, is sleeping in a garage. Her daughter Cynthia tries to be positive.

“I believe that God will provide,” she says. “But we need any help we can get.”

JOYCE FREEMAN’S WISH

Joyce Freeman’s family needs to renovate the garage that serves as her makeshift bedroom, the only room large enough to accommodate the many devices that keep her mobile. Her daughter would like help from a contractor to insulate the room, to replace the garage floor with suitable flooring to make navigating Freeman’s wheelchair easy, to build a closet and a separate handicapped-accessible shower, and to build a stronger, more durable ramp for her wheelchair. The family also needs a large van that could transport Freeman and her chair. The family has been struggling since the economic downtown and the intermittent unemployment of Johnson’s husband, who is in the home construction business, and would appreciate any donations for food, utilities and expenses.

ZOE FARRELL

Life in ‘Zoe Mo’ full of perseverance, pain

UPDATE: Dec. 24, 2009

By LIZ BALMASEDA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Zoe Farrell wanted a pink guitar. The 7-year-old cancer patient got her wish last week, thanks to the folks at Chafin Musicenter in Lake Worth.

The Chafin family and the store’s staff not only granted the guitar wish, but also lavished the Boynton Beach girl and her little brother with new bicycles. At the Palm Beach Kennel Club later that afternoon came a family-sized gift from kennel club president Pat Rooney Jr. and Al Packer Ford: a brand-new SUV, a 2010 cherry-red Ford Edge.

Zoe’s story has generated an outpouring of support for her and her struggling family. The lively girl, whose kinetic energy has been dubbed “Zoe-Mo” by caregivers, has endured eight operations, chemotherapy and radiation treatments to target a chest tumor nearly the size of a soccer ball.

One West Palm Beach girl was so inspired by Zoe’s courage that she gave up all her birthday presents in her honor. Jamie Rapp, a fifth-grader at Rosarian Academy, asked her friends to donate to Season to Share in lieu of giving her presents. Last week, on her 11th birthday, she delivered a donation check for $710 to The Post’s main offices.

“When I read her story I thought it must have been very difficult to have so many surgeries when you’re just 7 years old,” said Jamie, who, like Zoe, loves music.

In a year when charities across the nation felt the squeeze of economic hardships, Post readers have responded to this year’s nominees with early signs of characteristic generosity.

“The generosity of Palm Beach Post readers is amazing. Last year, in the heart of the recession, readers donated a record amount of money to help their community. This year is another impressive year for Season to Share — because Post readers know their neighbors are suffering, and they know we all have to join together to help each other,” said Jan Tuckwood, Post presentation editor and president of the Season to Share board.

ORIGINAL STORY: Dec. 16, 2009

By CHARLES PASSY
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Ignore the huge scar running across the side of her chest. Pay no attention to her nearly bald head. Those are just physical manifestations of Zoe Farrell’s cancer.

The real Zoe — the pint-sized second-grader who fills a room with a kinetic energy that some caregivers describe as “Zoe Mo” (the opposite of slo-mo) — remains very much alive.

It doesn’t take more than a morning visit to her home in Boynton Beach to reach this conclusion. Of course, that’s provided you can pause long enough while Zoe commands your attention with her artistic talents or fills you in on her latest school science report.

These days, however, Zoe must learn her lessons from home. After a grueling year’s worth of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation to treat a large tumor growing in her chest, the honor-roll student is not quite ready to head back to Citrus Cove Elementary. Her immune system is still severely compromised. Her medical journey is far from over.

“I’ve had eight surgeries in my whole life, and I’m only seven,” says Zoe, who nevertheless speaks so cheerily that she all but defies you to take pity on her.

It all began a year ago. Zoe’s mom noticed her daughter was panting a bit, but thought Zoe was just being her elfin jokester self. When the panting continued after bedtime, mom knew something was wrong.

After a trip to a walk-in clinic and an immediate visit to Palms West Hospital, Zoe was airlifted to Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she was rushed into surgery. A tumor nearly the size of a soccer ball was pressing on the girl’s lungs and heart.

Zoe won the battle, but faced a protracted war of surgeries and treatments as her family dealt with mounting medical bills — at least $25,000 — not covered by insurance. Add to that the expenses incurred while Zoe underwent radiation in Jacksonville and the fact that Victoria was unable to work. She stayed at Zoe’s bedside while her husband, John, a customer service specialist at Office Depot’s corporate center, cared for their 4-year-old son, Eli.

The Farrells are hard-working people who have managed to persevere. But cancer takes its toll — on the patient and the family. They are emotionally and financially drained. Ironically, their chief source of strength has been Zoe herself.

As for Zoe, she’s eager to get back to school, take guitar lessons and resume ballet classes. And she can’t wait to ride her bike again. After all, when you’re running on “Zoe Mo” time, there’s a lot of life to be lived.

ZOE’S WISH

Zoe’s family needs assistance with countless household expenses, such as food, gas and car repairs (the AC in their 15-year-old Saturn doesn’t work and the tires and headliner need to be replaced). Zoe’s dad, John, remains hard at work at Office Depot, but his job’s insurance doesn’t cover thousands in medical expenses. The family is also hoping to provide Zoe with guitar lessons, buy a few Christmas presents, and enjoy the sort of family activities they’ve long denied themselves, such as visiting an Orlando theme park, attending the South Florida Fair, or simply seeing a movie. Zoe and her brother also need new bikes.

MARTIN RAMIREZ

Tot must heal amid financial, other hardships

By JOHN LANTIGUA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Martin Ramirez has his pride. He and his wife, Guatemalan immigrants, came to the United States in 2003 and always supported themselves.

But when their son, little Martin, was born here Oct. 30, 2007 with a serious digestive tract deformity that required various surgeries to save his life, they needed help.

“These last two years we have had a difficult situation,” says Ramirez, 28, a soft-spoken man who specializes in understatements.

When the baby was three days old, he went under the knife at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach so that doctors could attach a colostomy bag.

Months later he was on the table again for spinal surgery at Miami Children’s Hospital. There followed many more trips to Miami Children’s and Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital while doctors plotted the complicated operations that would allow the child to lose the colostomy bag and relieve himself normally.

But Ramirez and his wife, Hermilia Hernandez, don’t have a car and don’t have much discretionary income. That was where the non-profit organization Families First of Palm Beach County came in, offering help with transportation, translation and a bit of cash.

Then came the major surgery, Sept. 15, in which doctors created a rectum for the boy who was born without one. A follow-up operation was performed in October.

Ramirez says his son’s discomfort has caused him heartache and also some self-doubt.

“It made me sad,” says the West Palm Beach father. “You start to think that maybe you made some error to offend God.”

Little Martin is still suffering discomfort, but his parents have been told that in time he should be fine. Meanwhile, Ramirez and Hernandez are extremely rateful. They are originally from Huehuetenango province, deep in the Guatemalan mountains, where medical care is at best rudimentary and sometimes nonexistent.

“We are very grateful to the people in this country for helping us,” Ramirez says. “We don’t know what might have happened if our son was born back there.”

At the moment the parents, the baby, and a brother, Jesus, 5, all live in one room in a barely furnished apartment they share with other people. The parents are loath to ask for more help, but the staff at Families First see this reality: Little Martin will continue to need care from specialists in Miami and his family desperately needs better living conditions in order to properly care for him.

MARTIN RAMIREZ’ WISH

Martin Ramirez Hernandez was born two years ago with a life-threatening deformity in his digestive tract. At three days old he underwent surgery to attach a colostomy bag. Not long afterwards doctors operated on his spine.

In the past two months he has endured two more surgeries. Meanwhile, he, his parents and his 5-year-old brother all sleep in one room, in a run-down, ill-furnished apartment they share with other people. It is all his father, a landscaping worker, can afford.

Martin’s family needs better living conditions. And since the boy will require continuing care from specialists at Miami Children’s Hospital, the family will need help with transportation and other expenses.

THE JOSEPH FAMILY

Mother needs a job and a home with furniture

UPDATE: December 24, 2009

By DAPHNE DURET
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The Joseph family’s story of perseverance inspired Palm Beach County School District teachers, therapists, students and staff to pool donations for the widowed mother of three sons, including one stricken with cerebral palsy and mild to moderate mental retardation.

Jean Zimmerman, the school district’s supervisor of occupational and physical therapy, read about the family in The Post and learned the widow’s 15-year-old son, Johnny, was in physical therapy at Pahokee Middle-Senior High School.

Folks from five departments organized a collection drive that gathered groceries, supermarket gift cards and clothes for the family. Meanwhile, the mother was summoned to her son’s school for a nonexistent meeting and surprised with a party and the gifts.

“I still get emotional when I think about it,” says Zimmerman, who estimates the food donations are enough to sustain the family for four months. “It started as a small project and it just spread in a huge way.”

The mother, who was nominated to Season to Share by the Farmworker Coordinating Council of Palm Beach County, welled up at the sight of so many gifts.

“We had a (Haitian creole ) interpreter there. He kept saying, ‘This is all yours.’ And she kept saying, ‘Me? For me?’ ” said Zimmerman.

Days later, Siliana Joseph basked in the afterglow of the surprise.

“I feel like dancing,” she said of her gifts.

ORIGINAL STORY: Nov. 26, 2009

By DAPHNE DURET
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Late at night, long after her four sons are asleep, Siliana Joseph lies on her back and stares up at her bedroom ceiling, thinking.

She tries to close her eyes, but whenever she does, her mind races.

She thinks about her husband, Eugene, who lived in the United States for 20 years before he brought her here from Haiti in 2001 — and died without warning four years later.

She thinks about the money she had to borrow to bury him, and the local creditors who still visit her house demanding she pay the $2,000 she owes — with interest.

She thinks about how she struggles to find a job and when she does, she makes barely $40 a day for backbreaking seasonal work in the fields picking corn.

She thinks about how some days all she can offer for dinner to her four sons — including one with cerebral palsy and another with unexplained seizures — are meager plates of white rice.

“I think all the time,” says the 50-year-old Belle Glade mother. “My head is just turning, turning, turning. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do.”

Joseph said she contemplated moving back to Haiti, but she couldn’t — Hurricane Jeanne in 2004 had destroyed the small home she had in her native Gonaives. She returned to Haiti only to bring her sons, Eugeneson, Junior and Johnny to live with her here. It was only then that her family told her that Johnny, a previously healthy boy, had come down with a fever from which he never recovered. Doctors here diagnosed him with cerebral palsy with mild to moderate mental retardation.

Johnny, now 15, weighs about 70 pounds and cannot walk, feed, bathe or dress himself. Eugeneson, a 19-year-old high school student, is crippled by seizures for which doctors prescribe medications that cost nearly $200 a month.

Joseph says she has filled out papers to receive public assistance but has been rejected. She recently had to move from a cheaper, second-floor apartment because she took a terrible fall as she was carrying Johnny down the flight of stairs one morning. The two tumbled. Joseph sprained her ankle as she fell back, using her own body to break her son’s fall.

Through it all, Joseph’s focus has remained her children. Her new home, tiny and spare, is adorned with plastic flowers hanging from the walls and thrift-store figurines. Despite her trials, she says all she wants is a job and a home with furniture for her sons.

“That’s when I would sleep at night,” Joseph said. “When I know that I took care of my kids.”

THE JOSEPH FAMILY’S WISH

The family needs to live in a wheelchair accessible three-bedroom home with household furniture, including a dining room or kitchen table and beds for the boys. Johnny, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy, needs an appropriate wheelchair. Johnny will also need to be enrolled in an after-school care program when his mother returns to work this year. The boys could use shoes and clothing and the entire family could use gift cards for food. Joseph’s youngest son, Frenel, wants a PSP and video games for Christmas.

JASMINE HUTTON

Vibrating recliner means relief for autistic teen

By MATHILDE PIARD
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Jasmine Hutton goes through two dozen AA batteries per week.

She does not use them for a tape player or a digital camera or toys. She uses the batteries for the neck vibrating pillow that she loves to wear and then toss aside once she is tired of it, without turning it off, because she doesn’t know how to.

The 19-year-old was born with infantile autism, mental retardation and the absence of temporal lobes in her brain. She doesn’t speak and wears leg braces — purple ones with butterflies. But she knows what she wants and how to get it — and when she doesn’t, she gets upset and starts to rock or pace and then moves onto banging her head against the wall and scratching herself until she bleeds.

“She needs all the help she can get to calm down,” says Jasmine’s mother, Amy Hutton. Jasmine was adopted by the Huttons at age 2 but was placed in a group home at 11 because of self-abusive behavior. It was better for the family, says Hutton, who has 16 other children.

The only thing that soothes Jasmine is her vibrating neck pillow. She wears the pillow after school each day as she sits in her recliner, alone in her room.

She also enjoys other tactile sensations — playing in the grass, sand or mulch outside, or getting tickled by her housemate.

“She’s not hard to please, as long as she has the massage around,” says Amanda Bennett, the home coordinator where Jasmine lives. Jasmine has been living with Bennett for eight years, but her adoptive parents remain involved in her life and schooling.

She goes through another neck pillow once a month, but thankfully she doesn’t have expensive tastes: she prefers the cheaper ones, with the not-so-discreet motor noise.

“Jasmine is capable of letting you know exactly what she wants,” says Bennett. She knows how to let people know when she’s hungry or thirsty, or how to turn the water to a cooler temperature if her bath is too hot.

Still, her goals sometimes seem daunting: feeding herself, sweeping her room, packing her book bag.

“Having a vibrating chair would be a motivation for Jasmine to achieve different goals,” says Bennett.

JASMINE’S WISH

Jasmine Hutton’s caregivers think she would greatly benefit from a Somatron Vibrating Recliner, which vibrates to minimize anxiety and would help calm Jasmine’s urge to scratch herself. Other things like vibrating neck pillows, plush toys, blankets, and comforting vibrotactile toys and furniture would also help her.

MADISEN BYRD

Girl’s leukemia takes physical, emotional, financial toll

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010

In Okeechobee, a 4-year-old leukemia patient has been greatly cheered by the community’s generosity. Madisen Byrd’s family is finally planning a Disney World trip.

“People brought in educational games and toys and princess outfits. Madisen has just brightened up. She’s like a flower that has blossomed,” says mental health counselor Barbara Abernathy, the program director for the Pediatric Oncology Support Team of West Palm Beach.

Diagnosed in July 2008, Madisen has spent the last year and a half in and out of Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee, undergoing painful spinal taps, bone marrow procedure and chemotherapy.

The struggle has taken its toll on the 34-pound girl, who has displayed tremendous courage despite her greatest fears.

“She’s like a new child. Before she was a little timid and sad. But it’s like a miracle has happened for this child. She’s gaining self-confidence. She has seen all these people care about her and her family,” says Abernathy.

“There has been a dramatic change. The outpouring of love that this family has received from the community has been life-changing.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

By KEVIN D. THOMPSON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

“Your daughter has cancer.”

Four words no parent ever wants to hear.

But that’s what doctors told Lori Byrd in July 2008. Her daughter, Madisen, then 3, had been coming home from preschool tired and pale. She was feverish and wasn’t eating. The first diagnosis: low iron. After more blood tests, however, Lori received grim news.

Leukemia.

“It was the scariest day of our lives,” Lori recalls.

Lori and her husband, Jimmy, already had lost one child, Madisen’s twin sister, Mauri, who died at childbirth. The thought of losing another was inconceivable. Fortunately, Madisen was diagnosed with a type of leukemia that is highly treatable. Still, the bouncy little girl, who loves to fish and play computer games, has spent the last 16 months in and out of Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee.

The girl with the dazzling hazel eyes and infectious personality was scared. All she wanted was her mommy. “I couldn’t take two steps away from her,” says Lori, 38.

Chemotherapy, spinal taps, bone marrow procedures — Madisen, a 34-pound dynamo, has endured them all. She lost her hair. Twice. But the injections are the worst.

“When I get that needle in my chest, it really hurts and I cry,” Madisen says softly, curling into her mother’s arms in their Okeechobee home.

Spiraling medical bills have taken a toll on the family. Lori estimates Blue Cross/Blue Shield has paid more than $400,000 in medical bills. The family has shelled out about $8,000 of its own money. It has been a struggle because the girl’s father, a 40-year-old electrician, is having a tough time finding work in a down economy.

“It’s been a strain on us financially,” Jimmy says. “That’s what I worry about more than anything.”

Madisen goes to the doctor twice a month for checkups and gets a spinal tap every three months. Her prognosis is good. Lori says her daughter has been in remission for more than a year.

“The doctors call her a fast responder,” Lori says.

The girl’s blond hair is finally growing back. If all goes well, Madisen will start kindergarten next fall.

What does she look forward to most?

“Homework,” she says, giggling. “And playing with other kids.”

MADISEN’S WISH

At present, there’s only one income in Madisen’s household and the family could use gas cards to defray transportation expenses to and from the hospital. The Byrds could also use Target and Publix cards to buy groceries and supplies. Madisen loves playing computer games and she’d enjoy some educational software to get her ready for school. Her parents dream of taking her to Disney World on a family vacation.

PIERRE-LOUIS FAMILY

Family, with deaf parents, needs help meeting basics

UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010

In Lake Worth, a deaf couple struggling to raise two young daughters amid tough economic times also felt the community’s giving spirit. Elna and Wilnick Pierre-Louis, hotel housekeeping attendants who often went without meals so they could afford to feed their girls, ages 2 and 4, have received clothes, shoes, household necessities and cash donations to help pay bills.

Their daughters have been inundated with gifts, says Jeanned’arc Tousignant, the family’s caseworker at Adopt-a-Family of the Palm Beaches.

“They got clothes, toys - so many learning toys and toys that make noise,” says Tousignant. “People went crazy. It was awesome.”

The caseworker says the family has been adopted by at least two community clubs, including a Girl Scout troop.

“This means this family can now breathe. They don’t have to live the way they were living, worried every single minute,” says the caseworker. “It’s a big weight off their shoulders.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

By LIZ BALMASEDA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

In the silence between them, the young husband and wife communicate in elegant sweeps of hands and soaring words unspoken. Elna and Wilnick Pierre-Louis, both deaf, share a language that combines American sign language with the colloquial touches of their native Haiti, where they met and fell in love.

They are parents to two little girls, ages 4 and 2, both girls born hearing able. While the Lake Worth couple faces daily challenges in navigating the sensory gulf that divides their quite vocal daughters from their own soundless world, these are nothing compared with the larger hardships they face as a family.

This extraordinary family is facing struggles that in today’s bleak economy may seem ordinary. Elna, 28, was laid off from her housekeeping job at a local hotel. Wilnick, 32, works shortened hours in the laundry room of a beach resort.

“His hours seem shorter every day,” says Elna, a slender woman with a disarming smile, through an interpreter. She keeps a watchful eye on her youngest girl, Merline, who is sounding out words nearby with the family’s social worker.

Money is so scarce now that she has been forced to cut back on essentials. “If I make rice and chicken, we’ll save half of it for tomorrow,” says Elna.

What worries the couple most is not being able to pay the light bill, which runs about $86 a month. No light means they cannot see one’s hand signals at night.

But Elna, like her husband, will speak about the scarcity only when probed. The couple prefers to speak of their gratitude toward Adopt-a-Family of the Palm Beaches. Thanks to the agency, the family has lived in a cozy townhome in a subsidized project since last year. Left homeless when they could no longer afford their $745 rent, they were offered a new, clean place for $500 a month. The unit is outfitted with flashing light sensors to alert the couple to the door bell and with a screen that displays missed calls.

“We’re so lucky to have this nice apartment,” says Wilnick, a quick-witted, energetic man with a strong commitment to the education of his daughters.

It takes a while for him to reveal what’s missing in the two-bedroom apartment: beds. The family has slept for years on the floor. The detail was lost in translation. As soon as the agency heard about it, it found beds for the family. But the incident brought up a central issue: this family needs regular interpretation services to keep it engaged, healthy and safe.

Sign language interpreter Deborah Wesson Gibson contributed her services for this report.

PIERRE-LOUIS FAMILY’S WISH

Elna and Wilnick Pierre-Louis, a deaf couple living in Lake Worth, struggle to provide the basics for their two young daughters. They scrape by with little income, since Elna was laid off from her housekeeping job and Wilnick’s hours have been reduced to part-time. They would benefit greatly from supermarket gift cards for groceries, clothes and shoes for the girls — ages 2 and 4 — and Christmas toys and decorations. They ask for nothing for themselves, but clearly they could use clothing and shoes for themselves. The family also needs regular interpretation services to keep them engaged in their daughters’ world — and keep them healthy and safe.

CASTILLO-SMITH FAMILY

Teen awaiting lung transplant could use laptop

By ANA M. VALDES
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Like many other 15-year-olds, Kaiya Castillo-Smith enjoys manicures and playing Wii games, and has more friends on Facebook than she can keep up with.

You’d never know that beneath her permanent smile, there’s a teenager who is at the top of the list for a lung transplant.

“She’s always smiling, laughing. Unless she’s really sick, it’s hard to realize that her lungs are operating at like 12 or 14 percent,” said Kisha McIntosh, Kaiya’s mother.

Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis a few days before her first Christmas in 1994, Kaiya has always shared her school and playtime with difficult hours of breathing treatments and over 20 daily medications.

She’s attended only a few days of her freshman year at Boynton Beach High, and must take online courses to keep up with her classmates.

A transplant is Kaiya’s only option. Because of this, her doctors recommended she and her mother move to Gainesville seven months ago to be near Shands Hospital in case she receives the call that a donor has been located.

McIntosh had to quit her job as property manager of her apartment complex in Boynton Beach to move to Gainesville. She and her daughter have used most of their savings, and although Medicaid pays for most of Kaiya’s treatments and hospitalization, McIntosh worries she will not be able to afford post-transplant housing in Gainesville.

She is struggling to pay rent and utilities for her Boynton Beach apartment, which she has kept so her 6-year-old daughter Sydni has a place to live.

Kaiya needs a new laptop to keep up with her schoolwork and would like board games and video games to make her long hospital stays more enjoyable.

“In this economy, many people may want to give but they can’t. Offer up a prayer instead,” McIntosh said. “It may not give her lungs, but it’s one less thing we have to worry about.”

As for Kaiya, she’s currently in and out of the hospital, but keeps busy planning her Sweet 16 party, or as she calls it, her Post-Transplant Party.

“You should see the list of everybody,” says her mother. “I just can’t wait to see her dance again. She hasn’t been able to do that in a long time.”

KAIYA’S WISH

Kaiya and her mother, Kisha, need money to pay for food, rent, gas, clothing and other needs. Kaiya also wants a laptop computer to help with her schooling, as well as a webcam so she can chat with family and friends in Boynton Beach while she waits for a transplant in Gainesville. Nintendo DS and Wii games, as well as board games, keep Kaiya entertained during long hospital stays. The family is also asking for a video camera, so Kaiya can document her experiences with cystic fibrosis and help others in the future.

SARMIENTO FAMILY

Their son’s health fades but their hope shines — for his sake

By KEVIN D. THOMPSON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The frail little boy in the orange T-shirt should be playing soccer — his favorite sport — with his brother and friends.
Instead, 9-year-old Sebastian Sarmiento is lying in a bed at Holtz Children’s Hospital in Miami where he’s hooked up to three IVs which are feeding him the protein, vitamins and medicine his 66-pound body desperately needs to stay alive.
Life can be cruel. And it definitely has been for Sebastian. In September 2007, the then third-grade student at Elbridge Gale Elementary School in Wellington was feeling tired and feverish. He wasn’t eating. When his mother, Adriana, noticed her son’s neck was swollen, she took him to the doctor. Blood tests came back positive: Sebastian had a high-risk form of leukemia. He was given a 50 percent chance of surviving.
“I can’t describe how I felt,” recalls Francisco Sarmiento, Sebastian’s father. “You feel like your kid is going to die.”
Both Adriana, a 39-year-old assistant manager at Men’s Wearhouse in Wellington, and Francisco, a 44-year-old civil engineer in the construction business, worked tirelessly to balance their work schedules to spend time with their ailing son. (The Sarmientos also have another son, Francisco Jr., 14, a student Wellington’s Polo Park Middle School.)
Things got worse when Francisco was laid off last year — two days before New Year’s. Although Francisco found another job two months later, he got laid off again last month. “My boss knew things were tough for me,” Francisco says quietly outside of his son’s sixth-floor room, “but I understood he had a business to run.”
Spiraling medical bills and the cost of gas (Adriana says they spent $1,000 in three months alone) are starting to take a financial toll. Francisco estimates their insurance has paid about $400,000 in hospital bills so far. “But we have to cover 10 percent of that,” he points out. With only one income, the Sarmientos are worried. “I know we have to pay for the house and the car,” Adriana says, “but our first priority is that Sebastian gets better.”
Sebastian’s cancer was in remission for several months, but it returned six months ago in his testicles. Radiation and chemotherapy treatments have left him without hair and extremely tired. “I don’t want to do much,” Sebastian says softly. He needs a bone marrow transplant to live, but that transplant can’t happen until the leukemia goes back into remission. And the doctors aren’t certain when — or if — that will happen.
Meanwhile, the Sarmientos, despite all the tears and heartache and unimaginable stress, continue to keep a positive attitude and find strength in God. Francisco says they have a very good reason to stay strong. “We want to give Sebastian many, many years,” he says. “That’s our motivation.”

THE SARMIENTOS’ WISH: The family needs assistance with household expenses. They recently had to ask their church for help with their utility bills. In September, family members had a fund-raiser and raised $3,500, but that’s not nearly enough. At present, there’s only one income coming in and the family could use help to help pay the mortgage. They could also use gas money, food cards, clothes for their two sons, age-appropriate toys and gift certificates to local area attractions.

Nominated by Connor Moran Children’s Cancer Foundation, 825 S. U.S. Hwy 1, Suite 200, Jupiter, FL 33477 (561) 741-1144

UPDATE

For the Sarmiento family, the best gift of all was having their leukema-stricken son home for the holidays - even if it was only for a little while.

“He couldn’t wait to see everyone,” says Francisco Sarmiento, Sebastian’s father.

Since reading about Sebastian in Season to Share, Wellington residents have been eager to bring a little more joy into the 9-year-old’s life. Teri Moran, executive director of the Connor Moran Children’s Cancer Foundation in Jupiter, says well-wishing neighbors have raised over $1,000 the last three weeks. The money will be used for sneakers, gas cards, games, DVDs and gift cards to Walmart, Target and Regal Cinemas. The Sarmientos’ mortgage and utilities were also paid for December and they will be paid again in January.

As for Sebastian, his cancer has yet to go into remission and doctors are still unable to give him the bone marrow transplant he needs. But the family refuses to lose faith. “We’re trying to stay as hopeful as possible,” says Adrianna Sarmiento, Sebastian’s mom. “And we’re praying a lot.”

UPDATE Jan. 31, 2009

Boy, 9, featured in ‘Season to Share,’ loses battle with cancer

By DON JORDAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

The Sarmiento family never lost hope.

Hope that 9-year-old Sebastian would return to school. Hope that he’d be back on the soccer field. Hope that the cancer that left the boy frail and tired would go into remission.

“We want our kid to be cured,” Francisco Sarmiento, Sebastian’s father, said late last year.

Sebastian died Friday afternoon, surrounded by his extended family, after a 16-month battle with leukemia.

Sebastian’s story was featured in The Palm Beach Post’s Season to Share. The boy’s somber gaze from behind a surgical mask became one of the program’s most poignant images.

After reading about Sebastian, Wellington neighbors raised more than $1,000 to be used for sneakers, gas cards, games, DVDs and gift cards to Walmart, Target and Regal Cinemas. The Sarmientos’ mortgage and utilities were also paid for December and January.

In the past month, Sebastian and his family traveled to New York City for three days with the help of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

“He wanted to go and see the Big Apple,” said Adriana Sarmiento, his mother.

They toured the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center.

“It was good for him,” his mother said. “He was kind of tired, but he enjoyed it.”

The morning after the family returned to South Florida, Sebastian had a seizure. The doctors said his blood pressure was very high, his mother said.

He had another episode of high blood pressure just days before his death.

As his health deteriorated over the past month, Sebastian never gave up hope, his mother said. He was in need of a bone marrow transplant to live, which wasn’t possible unless the leukemia went into remission. It never did.

“He was expecting to get better and be able to come home,” she said. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that a child like this had to suffer. He should have been protected from this.”

For the Sarmiento family, the only comfort comes from knowing that Sebastian wasn’t alone when he died, his mother said. He was surrounded by the people who loved him.

A funeral Mass will be held for Sebastian at 10:30 a.m. Monday at St. Rita Catholic Church in Wellington.

DIANE PERRY

She comes through for everyone; now, she could use a hand

By MATHILDE PIARD
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Diane Perry is the center that holds her small universe together.
When her grandmother, Lucille, lost her home last month, Diane assured the 93-year old that she would not let her go to a nursing home. Now, the woman lives with her.
And when her daughter was sent to prison two years ago, she told her worried grandsons Terrence and Terrell that foster homes were out of the questions. “If anybody attempts to take you, I’m going to fight to the end. I’m not going to give up.”
And she doesn’t. She can’t. Even though obstacles seem to spring up at every turn.
She lost her job at an orange grove after 23 years — a job she expected to retire from. “I thought, what am I going to do? Quit feeling sorry for myself.”
Within three weeks, she had another job. And when the boys moved in, Diane, 49, took a second one.
Soon after they arrived, Terrell, 11, was diagnosed with asthma, high blood pressure and neurological problems. So every few weeks, Diane borrows a car from a friend and drives the 100 miles from Indiantown to Miami so her grandson can see a specialist. Her own car, a Cadillac she bought for $1,000, is too run down to make the trip.
And when she thought the boys needed a male figure in their lives, she enlisted a friend to become their Big Brother. Now, he takes them for breakfast on Sundays.
Terrell is already doing better in school; his favorite class is math.
Terrence, 13, who sees a counselor for anger issues, plays percussion at his church. And while he’s still quiet over Sunday breakfast, he lights up at the drums, biting his lower lip in concentration and proudly wearing the suit he wanted for so long, the one Diane bought for him with Salvation Army vouchers.
So they are settling into a routine, but now the economy conspires against them. When the boat making plant where she worked cut production in September, Diane once again lost her job. For the first time in her life, she is getting unemployment benefits, but the $441 she receives every month just isn’t enough for a household of four. In November, she was behind on her $511 mortgage payment.
“It got to the point where I wanted to give up,” she said. “But I looked at my grandkids and I knew that I couldn’t give up.”
And her universe may expand. Diane’s niece, who is also in prison, has AIDS. Diane is thinking of taking in her daughters.
What else can she do? “I’ll just sleep on the couch or on the porch,” she says with a laugh. “As long as we’re one happy family.”

DIANE PERRY’S WISH

Diane Perry, 49, cares for her two grandsons, aged 13 and 11, and her grandmother, 93. The youngest boy has neurological issues and high blood pressure. She needs gas cards and repairs done to her car, which is falling apart, so she can drive him to see his specialist in Miami and to take both boys to visit their mother in prison. She also needs help with everyday needs, such as food, clothing and bills, and with her mortgage, because she recently was laid off from her job. The boys hope for iPods.

Nominated by: Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Martin County, 5033 S.E. Federal Highway Stuart, FL 34997 (772) 283-8373.
Its mission: To help children reach their potential through professionally supported one to one mentoring relationships.

UPDATE

Terrell, 11, wanted to know where his grandmother was hiding the Christmas presents. But he knew she is a no-nonsense woman, so after a few pleas met with calm refusal, he dropped the issue - he already knew what one of the presents was, anyway. Thanks to donors from Season to Share, Terrell was eagerly expecting an iPod on Christmas morning.

In addition, Diane Perry received an assortment of dry goods and over $7,000 through various donations. Some of that money will pay for car repairs, so Diane will be able to drive Terrell to his medical appointments for his asthma, high blood pressure and neurological problems. The rest will be used for gas cards, groceries, clothing, bills and mortgage payments during the next few months.

Her older grandson, Terrence, 13, has a new therapist to help him work through the anger issues he developed after his mother went to prison.

Diane holds her small universe together with a new job at a juice factory. It’s through a temp agency and has no benefits, but she is thankful just to have a job.

“It’s a pay check,” she said, and it helps her make it until the next set of bills arrive.

The donations she received through Season to Share will help her get ahead a little.

“It just makes me so thankful that people who don’t even know you are willing to help,” said Diane. “It’s a blessing.”

STACI JONES

With a little help, family could realize big dreams

By JANIS FONTAINE
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Behind Staci Jones’ pretty brown eyes, there’s intelligence.
Then there’s her mischievous smile, with the tiny white teeth — so perfect despite her other challenges.
At 5 years old, Staci can’t speak or walk without assistance. She isn’t toilet-trained and is just learning to feed herself.
Staci was born with agenesis of the corpus callosum, a birth defect in which the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain is partially or completely absent. ACC prevented her brain from developing properly, leaving Staci with compromised motor skills and mental retardation.
But since she started attending Potentials Charter School at the ARC of Palm Beach County in Riviera Beach, an organization that works to improve the lives of children and adults with developmental delays, she’s been achieving things that no one thought she would. With speech, occupational and physical therapy — and the support and dedication of the staff — doors are opening.
Every tiny milestone is a cause for celebration — and Staci is the first to grin and applaud. Staci drank from a cup today! Yay! Staci wiped the table after lunch! Yay! Staci took three unaided steps! Yay!
No one could be happier than Staci’s devoted mother, Latonya Williams, who had been searching for a place where her dreams for Staci — to walk and talk and be able to care for herself — might come true. Now, Latonya believes, there is hope.
The family, though, lives in Delray Beach, so every day, Latonya gets up at 5:45 a.m. to feed Staci before they board the bus for the Tri-Rail station. Then, mom and daughter ride Tri-Rail to the Mangonia Park station where a special van meets them to take Staci to school. In the afternoon, they repeat the process in reverse. And Tri-Rail costs about $25 each week.
Latonya, 27, has held clerical jobs and attended a vocational career college, where she was studying medical billing until Staci’s needs forced her to leave the program. Now that Staci is settled — and progressing — she wants to go back to school and get a job, but dependable transportation is holding her back. She’d like to move closer to the school, too, but she doesn’t have money for a security deposit and rent.
“I don’t like to ask for help,” Latonya says, “but I have to for my kids.” (Big sister Kiara, 10, is a good student and a great help to her mom.)
“Whatever happens, I hold my head up and stay strong.”

STACI JONES’ WISH

The family needs transportation so Latonya, Staci’s mother, can get her to school, therapy and doctor’s appointments. Transportation would also enable Latonya to get a job and to go back to college. The family would like to move closer to Staci’s school but they need rent money. Staci could benefit from devices like the Little Step by Step Communicator ($150) and CheapTalk 8 ($275). The family could use a computer with Internet access — Kiara, 10, and Latonya could use it for schoolwork and to challenge Staci to communicate. Staci, who isn’t toilet-trained, needs baby wipes and pull-ups, and Staci needs a stroller until she gets strong enough to walk. She would like a push-toy, which would help strengthen her legs. Both girls love books and music. Kiara’s big dream would be a Nintendo Wii. The whole family needs clothes and shoes.

Nominated by: The ARC of Palm Beach County, 1201 Australian Ave., Riviera Beach, FL 33404 (561) 842-3213

UPDATE

An average Friday turned into the best Christmas Day ever for 5-year-old Staci Jones, her mother, LaTonya Williams, and Staci’s big sister Kiara. Neighbors and strangers opened their hearts and wallets after reading Staci’s story in Season to Share.

Much of the good cheer came from kids Staci’s age.

Teacher Lorraine Brunner at Hagen Road Elementary in Boynton Beach was touched by Staci’s photo and wanted to help her.

“She looked like an angel,” said Brunner, who has been a teacher for 31 years. “My heart said ‘Let’s do something for her.’ The following Monday I showed the kids her picture and read them the story, and I discussed how fortunate we are. They wanted to help.” Other teachers and school personnel took part, too. “They got so excited, and the stuff just started coming in.”

Jennifer Peterson from Potentials School at the ARC of Palm Beach County, where Staci gets therapy, drove to Boynton Beach to pick up the donations and speak to the students. Clothing, including brand new outfits, slippers and pajamas, and dolls and stuffed animals were loaded into her van.

When she got back to the school, Peterson brought mom LaTonya out to see what the students sent.

“When she opened the door, I was shocked,” LaTonya said. “Me and my kids are going to get together and make them a big card to thank them.

“I’m so much less stressed out now! But I’m still kind of shocked. I never received so much from anyone.”

AMELIA JONES

A life falls apart, but mom keeps looking up

By AMY ROYSTER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Amelia Jones is in a lot of pain.
It’s heartbreak.
And bad as it feels, it’s not her biggest problem.
Her family is hungry. Her baby needs diapers. And she has to talk someone into baby-sitting so she can get to work.
There’s no time to indulge in sentimental feelings about the life she used to have back when she was a stay-at-home mom. Back when her family lived in a modest home. Back before this 29-year-old woman who has never had so much as a parking ticket, found out the love of her life had done a very bad thing.
Three weeks after giving birth by C-section, her children’s father went to prison for stealing from his employer, and Amelia went to work as a waitress.
When Daniel Ramos, director of Program Reach at Pat Reeves Village, a homeless shelter in West Palm Beach, met Amelia, she was clutching a ragged list of free resources, surviving by running from homeless shelter to church to community center, desperately trying to piece together enough food and supplies to get her family through each day.
“She would really rather work,” Ramos says.
But how can a mother leave for work — even when she really needs to work — if her three young children are unattended? And how can she earn money to pay a sitter when she cannot work?
And, as if that cycle is not overwhelming enough, Amelia’s car was stolen.
“I have anxiety. Sometimes I can’t catch my breath. But when I wake up, there are my babies looking at me, so when I wake up, I go.”
Ramos gave Amelia temporary shelter at Pat Reeves Village. And for a while she took the bus to a job at Wal-Mart, but after a couple of months she quit to avoid being fired for missing work on days when nobody could watch her kids.
She got her current job — one day a week as a cashier — by begging the business owner every day for a month. She makes about $75 a day. Half goes to child care that she scrambles to find each week “by calling and begging everyone I know.”
Still, Amelia teaches her children to thank God for all their blessings, “I tell them we could be living under a bridge. I show them the homeless when I take them for walks.”
She is rejoicing at the recent news that Adopt-A-Family has accepted her application for permanent housing.
Now she can focus on finding child care and more work. She dreams of going to school and becoming a kindergarten teacher.
“I just want to be normal,” Amelia says. “I want to work. I want to be able to take care of my family and not have to be always asking for help.”
The father of her children now lives with another woman and provides no financial support. Sometimes he calls, and when he does, Amelia hides her heartache and says, “Yay, it’s Daddy!”
Ramos says he has witnessed this selflessness many times.
Regardless of how Amelia Jones may be feeling on any given day, she knows Tailor, 4, Montel, 3, and Paiton, 1, need her.

AMELIA’S WISH

A car — “nothing fancy” — to replace the one that was stolen. Child care for her 1-year-old. A job during school hours: This outgoing, friendly woman has experience as a baker, waitress and cashier. Children’s clothing: size 10 boys, size 12 boys shoe, size 7/8 girls, size 12 girls shoe, size 4T girls, size 5 girls shoe. A car seat for her 1-year-old. A child’s potty. Diapers and wipes. Bikes with training wheels for her older children and a push toy for the baby to give her children for Christmas.

Nominated by The Center for Family Services of Palm Beach County Inc. 4101 Parker Ave., West Palm Beach, FL 33405. (561) 616-1222.

UPDATE

It’s been a long road for Amelia Jones, but she’s in the driver’s seat of a Dodge Grand Caravan now.

Amelia went from being a stay-at-home mother of three young children to being homeless, hungry and heartbroken when the father left.

She’s been slowly putting the pieces back together, working whenever she can arrange child care, and accepting help from Program Reach at Pat Reeves Village, Adopt-a-Family and The Post’s Season to Share program.

Post readers who identified with Amelia’s story donated clothing, toys and bikes for her children. So many gifts came in that Amelia was able to provide a nice Christmas for her family this year.

Dave and Linda Delzoppo of Loxohatchee donated a minivan with room for Tailor, 4, Montel, 3, and Paiton, 1. Amelia recently brought her children to meet the Delzoppos. She drove up smiling.

“You have made our life so much easier,” Amelia told them. “We went from riding trains, buses and walking miles every day to driving. God bless you.”

YVETTE ALICEA

She pits pride, courage against cancer

By LIZ BALMASEDA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

In her darkest hour, Yvette Alicea, ovarian cancer patient and single mother of a 15-year-old son, sent up a prayer: “God, please let me live, so I can raise my son and help others.”
She is a woman with the heart of a social worker, a sense of mission she inherited from her mother in Puerto Rico. Even on days when she’s feeling weak from her cancer treatments, she brightens when she talks about those she’s been able to help, like the young mother with the cancer-stricken baby she shuttled to the hospital, or the poor families she has helped through her church group by staging fashion shows.
Yvette is 43 and she’s been fighting her cancer for six years, since her son was 9. It began with a searing pain in her lower abdomen one day close to Thanksgiving of 2002. After several hours in surgery, doctors came to a devastating conclusion: Yvette had an aggressive form of ovarian cancer.
Since then, the Jupiter mother has undergone several operations, several rounds of chemotherapy and intensive radiation treatments. An articulate woman who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration, she was forced to put her dream of earning a social work degree on hold when the cancer returned, for the third time, two years ago. Since then, it has reappeared three more times.
During a period of remission, Yvette found a job at Families First of Palm Beach County, an agency that assists struggling families. But earlier this year, Yvette’s doctors urged her to stop working. In July, they delivered another difficult diagnosis: The cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.
She is on medical leave, but her health benefits run out at the end of December. She receives sporadic financial support from her ex-husband, but he lost his job some years ago and now struggles to make a living in sales.
Yvette was forced to declare bankruptcy after her first recurrence of cancer. She was able to save her house, but has fallen behind in payments after her subsequent cancer bouts.
Her son, J.J. Crespo, a 10th-grader, is an outfielder on the junior varsity baseball team at Jupiter High. He recalls how his mother, in the wake of her divorce from his father, devoted her nights and weekends to making him feel at home in Jupiter, a city where they had no family. She nurtured his love for baseball, shuttling him to practice and games.
“My mother has taught me to be strong,” says the quiet teen, who greets visitors with a handshake.
Yvette beams as she watches J.J. excuse himself and head upstairs to study in his room.
“In spite of everything, I feel so blessed,” says Yvette. She is a cheerful woman with a robust personality, but her eyes mist over when she says this. “I believe there is always hope.”

YVETTE’S WISH

This family needs financial assistance to pay bills and household expenses.
Yvette’s 15-year-old son, an avid baseball player, needs a computer for schoolwork. The family’s computer stopped working recently.

Nominated by Families First of Palm Beach County, 3333 Forest Hill Blvd, 2nd Floor, West Palm Beach, FL, 33406 (561) 721-2887.

UPDATE

Yvette Alicea, a single mother battling ovarian cancer, facing foreclosure and teetering on the verge of losing her medical insurance, calls herself a blessed woman. She believes she has seen the divine in the kind acts of strangers.

“I feel God exists in each of the persons who has helped me,” says the mother of a 15-year-old son, Jupiter High 10th-grader J.J. Crespo.

After Alicea’s story appeared in Season to Share, she received a computer and printer for her son, a computer for herself, a DVD player, groceries, money to pay household and medical expenses, and a flood of good will.

“People have really opened their hearts to me and my son,” says the 43-year-old Alicea, who has been fighting her cancer for six years. “I am so grateful to them.”

The community’s generosity has mitigated the setbacks she has suffered in the past couple of weeks, when a severe flu forced her to delay scans and treatment.

As is Alicea’s nature, her spirits remain upbeat. She has much to be thankful for, she says.

“I want to say ‘thank you’ to all those people who have been so generous with me,” says Alicea, who was nominated by Families First of Palm Beach County. “I want them to know that I pray for all of them. I pray that God multiplies their blessings.”

HOMELESS COALITION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY

Homelessness: ‘You could be next in line’

By STACI STURROCK
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Consider for a moment the small blessings you may have already taken for granted on this postcard-pretty fall day in Florida.
Did you wake up on a firm mattress? Linger in a hot shower? Pour yourself a glass of cold, sweet orange juice from a well-stocked fridge in your very own kitchen?
Now consider how all that, and so much more, would be out of reach if you lost the roof over your head, due to layoffs at work or a pile of medical bills or any of the unexpected ways that plain old bad luck knocks on your front door and invites itself in.
Unemployment, foreclosures, the kind of paycheck-to-paycheck living that is increasingly common in this nightmarish economy…. Homelessness, more than ever, does not discriminate.
“The faces of homelessness are changing,” says Rita Clark, executive director of the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County. “We want people to realize that your neighbor — maybe even you — could be next in line.”
And because the need for help is so great this year, the coalition took the unusual step of not nominating a single individual or family to Season to Share. Says Clark: “To pick one person would really be almost unethical.”
Instead, they are asking for general help for the entire coalition, a sort of umbrella agency that acts as a voice for the homeless.
To help spread the word about issues that the homeless face, the coalition recently established a speakers bureau of formerly homeless men and women, people like…
• 55-year-old Guy Nelson, who is now pursuing a degree in respiratory therapy but was homeless for six months.
• 23-year-old Antoinette Washington, who began living on the streets at the age of 16, when the grandmother with whom she lived moved into a home for the elderly.
• 46-year-old Frederick Sherman, a veteran who first experienced homelessness in middle school, but is now working during the day and attending school at night.
The homeless in Palm Beach County are largely invisible — they live in roughly 100 encampments, tucked in the less traveled areas of public parks, in abandoned buildings, behind shopping centers, from Jupiter to Boca, from the Glades to the Intracoastal.
They seek shelter in tents and lean-tos, sleep on flattened cardboard boxes and, Clark says, are thankful for the simplest gifts: a bottle of water, a clean pair of socks, news that the coalition has organized an event providing free medical checkups, haircuts and clothes.
“Every day there’s a different kind of need,” Clark says.

THE HOMELESS COALITION OF PALM BEACH COUNTY’S WISH

Cash donations to help provide items such as food, water, soap, shampoo, sunblock, bug spray, blankets and sleeping bags to those surviving on the streets, as well as clothing, gas cards and hotel vouchers.

Nominated by: The Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County Inc., 2100 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL 33409 (561) 478-5351

UPDATE

One woman donated a tent. Local TJ MAXX stores gave gift cards for food. Other people hand-delivered socks, sweaters, bottles of shampoo and individually wrapped cheese-and-crackers snacks - little things that mean a lot to those living on the streets.

Monetary contributions to the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County are roughly $10,000, including a $220 gift from some Lake Worth High School students who organized a silent auction of photos to raise money.

But more awareness about homelessness may be the most lasting gift that grew out of the Season to Share article about the coalition (the entire agency, rather than an individual or family, was profiled).

“Those people coming in or calling have been very touched about how desperate a place it is to be homeless,” said executive director Rita Clark.

Guy Nelson, a formerly homeless man now studying respiratory therapy at Palm Beach Community College, belongs to the Homeless Coalition’s speakers bureau.

“My goal is to change people’s perception of the homeless,” he said. “That’s a difficult thing to work on. It’s incremental, I think. It happens in little nudges.”

In little nudges, at a silent auction. In the simple gifts of socks and snacks.

In extending a helping hand to neighbors in need, no matter where or how they live.

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!’”

AMALIA SANCHEZ*

Young woman struggles to keep promise to her mother

By LIZ BALMASEDA
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Seven years after leaving her native Mexico, Amalia Sanchez* had settled into the immigrant stream in Lake Worth, raising two children, selling homemade Mexican tamales while her husband worked as a landscaper. But one year ago, the delicate balance of her life was shattered when she learned her mother had been shot to death by a robber in Mexico. Amalia also learned her two young brothers had witnessed the violent death.
Fearing for their safety, Amalia arranged to have the boys slipped across the border and transported to Lake Worth, where they now live with her family in a small trailer home.
Not only did the boys, 9 and 11, arrive with post-traumatic issues, the older boy was losing his eyesight due to congenital glaucoma.
“He is timid, but he loves to study. He does his best to read although he’s lost vision in one eye,” says the 26-year-old Amalia, who had last seen her brothers when they were babies.
Amalia took the boy, Daniel, to the clinic at the Caridad Center in Boynton Beach, where the center’s ophthalmologist took on the case with a sense of urgency. Thanks to Dr. Howard Doyle’s intervention, a surgeon in Miami agreed to operate on Daniel in April. But a leakage of the surgical wound forced two more operations. Doctors say the boy will not regain the vision he has lost, but they’ve launched a valiant effort to save the vision he still has in his right eye.
Although the first surgery in Miami and the check-ups at the Caridad Center eye van were free, the other operations and additional care in Miami were not. Amalia keeps a stack of bills she’s unable to pay, ranging from $349 to $5,990.
The younger boy is still so traumatized by his mother’s murder that he cries out in his sleep at night. Still, he is seemingly better adjusted at school than his older brother. Amalia worries most about Daniel, who has fallen behind in school.
By taking in her brothers, Amalia has fulfilled a promise she made to her mother some years ago. Amalia had set her mother’s mind at ease after the passing of her father — yes, she said, she would take them in should anything happen. But she never expected her mother to die at age 45. She never expected that her maternal responsibilities would double overnight, that she would have to ration the food of her daughter and son, ages 7 and 3, to feed her brothers.
“There has been a tremendous financial impact on us, but this is my responsibility,” she says.
She can still remember her mother’s voice, just hours before her death. Amalia had wired a modest amount of money to her in Guerrero, and she had called to make sure her mother had received it.
“She said, ‘Thanks for the money. May God bless you,’” Amalia recalls. “And that was the last thing she said to me.”

* Amalia Sanchez is a pseudonym. She requested anonymity for herself and her family because they are undocumented.

AMALIA SANCHEZ’S WISH:

Financial assistance to help pay medical bills and household expenses. Tutoring for her brothers, ages 9 and 11. Clothes for boy, age 11, size 14-16, size 5 1/2 shoes. Clothes for boy, age 9, size 7-8. Clothes for boy, age 3, size 5-6. Clothes for girl, age 7, size 10-12. Grocery or department store gift card for household needs. The boys love soccer, and would enjoy any soccer-related toy, clothing or activity.

Nominated by: Caridad Center, Inc., 8645 Boynton Beach Blvd, Boynton Beach, FL 33472 (561) 737-6336
Mission: To improve the quality of life for children and families of the agricultural worker, laborer and under-served sector.

UPDATE

Amalia Sanchez*, a Lake Worth mother of two, inherited the care of her younger brothers after they witnessed their mother’s murder in Mexico.

But with the responsibility of raising the boys, ages 9 and 11, Sanchez also took on the duty of handling their traumas and illnesses. The older boy, Daniel, suffers from congenital glaucoma, a condition which has caused him to lose his vision in one eye.

Although the boy has been cared for by doctors at the Caridad Center in Boynton Beach, which nominated the family, the cost of recurring operations and follow-up medical care has piled up.

The good news is that help - in the form of cash and gift cards - has arrived for the family, says Barbara Vilaseca, the Caridad Center’s executive director.

Sanchez says her brothers are still struggling at school and she’s still hoping someone will donate tutoring sessions for them. As for their medical and emotional condition, she says the elder boy is scheduled for a checkup in January. The younger boy appears to be doing better. He appears to be having fewer nightmares at night. She says a therapist has started coming to the home to counsel him.

“He still has some issues,” says Sanchez, 26, “but he seems to be doing a little bit better.”

SHAWN KING

Boy’s dreams: to be a policeman, to have his own bedroom, to be healthy

By DIANNA SMITH
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Shawn King’s long, frail body curls like a baby’s, hiding beneath a sheet because the hospital room is so cold.
“He heard he is going to get a blood transfusion today, and he hates that,” Shella Bravo whispers, as her son stares sadly at his mother.
On this November day, Shawn is scared.
Though doctors say the transfusions and the chemotherapy treatments may make him better, Shawn no longer believes they work. Since his diagnosis of a rare bone cancer two years ago, the 11-year-old has hoped and prayed and fought for his health so he can play sports and run and just be a boy again.
He used to tell his mom he’d fight the cancer and promised to grow up to protect her. The doctors, he said, would save him.
But Shawn doesn’t say those things anymore.
The cancer, which began as a tumor in his right leg, has spread through most of his body, invading his back, his arms, even his skull.
He asks his mother if he’s going to die. And though one doctor recently suggested Shawn’s mom call hospice, Shella says she isn’t ready for that.
“You’re going to grow old and be a policeman,” Shella says to Shawn.
Every day he loses weight. Some days he barely speaks. And many nights, the pain is so bad that he rests his head on his mother’s shoulder and cries.
All he wants to do is go to school. He wants to see his friends. He doesn’t want to worry about his dark hair falling out or how strange it feels not to have eyebrows. And he wants his excruciating pain to go away.
Shella tries to be strong for her son. When Shawn is sad, she is there to lift him up. But lately, Shella has needed some lifting up of her own.
She cleans houses and caters here and there, but it isn’t enough to pay for Shawn’s $45,000 worth of medical bills. She gave up her apartment where she lived with Shawn and her 1-year-old daughter. They now squeeze into a bedroom in a relative’s Lake Worth home.
In what free time she has left, Shella desperately searches for clinical trial studies. She recently discovered one in Orlando, and she and Shawn travel there in an old car twice a week. After each drive, Shella wonders how she will afford gasoline again or if her car will even make it down the road.
With the holidays around the corner, she’s struggling with Shawn’s wish list. What he wants the most is his very own bedroom to decorate in a sports theme. He’s been wanting this for so long, but Shella doesn’t know how to give it to him. She can’t afford the rent.
Shella just wants her son to smile. And to laugh. And to feel like a kid again, something Shawn hasn’t felt like in a long, long time.
“I have to do everything I can for him,” Shella says. “I want to keep hope. We can’t just give up.”

SHAWN KING’S WISH

Rent and utility assistance for one year, so the family can focus on Shawn’s treatments and so Shawn can finally have his very own bedroom. A new car or improvements to the car Shella Bravo now drives. Gas and grocery gift cards. A Playstation 3 so Shawn can relax at home. A Nintendo DS and portable DVD player Shawn can use during his travels to Orlando, to help take his mind off of his chemotherapy treatments. A laptop with wireless capability so Shawn’s mom can look for jobs and research more hospitals by Shawn’s side, instead of having to take trips to the library to use the computer.

Nominated by the Pediatric Oncology Support Team of the Child Life Institute, 5325 Greenwood Ave. #301, West Palm Beach, FL 33407 (561) 882-6336

UPDATE

Shawn King now has hope.

You can see it in the smile he wears much more often these days. The 12-year-old boy battling bone cancer now worries more about his Nintendo DS games then the chemotherapy that tires his body.

Since readers learned of Shawn’s story, they’ve donated goodies such as a television set and a Playstation 3 and enough money to help Shawn’s mom, Shella Bravo, put a down payment on an apartment rental so Shawn can finally have his own room.

But the most surprising gift is sitting in their Lake Worth driveway.

Palm Beach Kennel Club President Pat Rooney Jr. bought the family a new white 2008 Chrysler Pacifica, purchased at Arrigo Dodge in West Palm Beach. He donated it on behalf of his employees so Shawn could be comfortable during his long drives to Orlando, where he’s part of a clinical trial study. The Pediatric Oncology Support Team of the Child Life Institute, which nominated Shawn, will help pay for car insurance.

Bravo says, “God bless you,” to those who have helped make her son’s life so much brighter this year.

This Christmas, Shawn wished for many things, but the one thing he whispered in Santa Claus’ ear is that he hoped to live through the holiday so his mom could have a merry Christmas.

Turns out, Shawn’s wish came true, along with many, many more.

“I see a change in Shawn,” said Barbara Abernathy of POST. “He was feeling hopeless but now he’s living life more. He’s engaged more. It’s been so phenomenal.

“There’s so little we can do for these kids,” Abernathy said through tears. But the community has come together and made Shawn King smile - and that is more than she could have hoped for.

UPDATE Jan. 22, 2009

Obituary: Shawn King, 11, fought bone cancer for 2 years

By DIANNA SMITH
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Shawn King knew he was dying.

So in the last few weeks of his life, he said goodbye.

He told loved ones he would miss them. He asked to be buried with his toy cars. And he asked his mom, Shella Bravo, to take special care of his 2-year-old sister. At 11 years old, though sick and so frail, Shawn still considered himself the man of the house.

“He said to make sure the door is always locked at night and to make sure his sister doesn’t eat sweets,” Bravo recalls. “He was very brave.”

Before Shawn died on Friday, he was still trying to fight the bone cancer that had been ailing him for two years. But Shawn lost his eyesight. His right lung stopped working. And on Friday, his mother watched him take his last breath.

The public showered Shawn with gifts in December after he was featured in The Palm Beach Post’s Season to Share. His family received a new car. The money let the family to move into an apartment where Shawn finally had his own room. On days he had energy, he insisted on decorating it himself.

The family took one last trip together to New York City, so Shawn could watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve. The last few days of his life, Bravo says he thought he was still in New York because he had such a wonderful time.

Though Shawn received countless gifts for Christmas, his most important wish was to live through the holidays so his mom could have a merry Christmas.

He saw it as his job to protect his mother as long as he could. And Bravo is convinced he is still doing just that. But now, he’s doing it from above.

“He’s in heaven right now,” Bravo says. “He’s watching his sister and me.”

GALLO FAMILY

A father’s wish: to provide for his family again

By ALEJANDRA CANCINO
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Marba Gallo, 45, clears tears from her eyes as her husband of 23 years, Carlos, describes the day they met in Havana.
Carlos was at a bus stop, heading to the beach, when he spotted a woman with long red hair wearing white shorts and a dark-blue shirt. They got on the bus, and he took the empty seat behind her.
“She smelled like spring,” says Carlos, 58, stopping his tale only when the pain reminds him to catch his breath.
The pain stems from the rounds of radiation and chemotherapy that burned his chest — and everything within — to get rid of the 3-inch tumor in his right lung. In April, four months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, doctors removed the tumor and half of his lung.
When he gets excited he speaks quickly, forgetting his limitations. He grabs the right side of his chest and closes his eyes as he takes a deep breath to continue his story.
Once on the beach, he recited a poem as Marba lay next to him, her eyes closed. She opened them when he was done. He moved closer. Waited. And planted a soft kiss on her lips.
“Her eyes had a sparkle in them,” he offers as an explanation for his cheeky behavior.
Now, those once-sparkly eyes look tired. Marba has become her husband’s 24-hour nurse. In June, they received more bad news: A PET scan found two small tumors in his brain.
More chemotherapy, more radiation, more fear. And a feeling of helplessness that weighs on Carlos, who wants to keep the promise he made to his family — to never let them go hungry again.
Hunger was the reason they left Cuba on a boat with 23 other immigrants in 2004. In Cuba, Carlos said, they would give their son Rodnim, now 12, and daughter Shirley, 20, water mixed with sugar before bed so their stomachs wouldn’t bother them and they could sleep.
Now, food has become an issue once again. Carlos and Marba sit at the dining room table of the apartment they rent with the help of Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches. He holds a $20 bill, all that’s left after paying the rent. It will have to last for the month.
Carlos, a welder, wants desperately to work again. It troubles him not to be able to pay the $45,000 in medical bills that have accumulated. He regrets that his son has to see him so sickly, and he cannot even afford to replace the boy’s broken bookbag.
It’s a far cry from life before cancer, the couple says, when Carlos was strong and could provide for his family and their four dogs, four cats, and 23 birds.
Those few good years, says Marba, “were like waking up in paradise.”

THE GALLOS’ WISH

Clothing and a computer for Rodnim; $7,000 to pay off the family’s 2003 Buick LeSabre; money to help pay the $134 monthly car insurance bill; $1,000 so that Marba can apply for citizenship; she is a legal resident, but being citizen will help Marba have better opportunities. Nutritional drinks like Ensure for Carlos’ special diet, and gift cards for food; and help to pay off the medical bills.

Nominated by Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches Inc., 1712 Second Ave. North, Lake Worth, FL 33405 (561) 253-1361

UPDATE

Marba Gallo says thank you between sobs. She thanks those who sent warm words and those who sent donations after her family’s story ran in Season to Share.

“Gracias,” she manages to say before the tears start flowing again.

Gallo’s husband, Carlos, is recovering from lung cancer and from the chemotherapy and radiation he underwent to remove two small tumors in his brain. On Nov. 12, doctors told Carlos, 58, that the tumors are gone. He now needs to regain his strength and lose his fear.

It will be a long process, but Carlos, nominated by Adopt-a-Family of the Palm Beaches, said the people who sent donations, including money to help with food and medical expenses, give him hope and courage.

“To see how people who don’t know you help you, gives you a lot of strength,” he said. “I wish them the best in this world.”

TRACY HARTSGROVE

She’s fighting for her life — and for her family

By DAPHNE DURET
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Every morning brings with it a new fight for Tracy Hartsgrove.
Every time she gets out of bed it’s always too soon, and there’s always a possibility that during her day — and she rarely ever knows when — another debilitating seizure could come and knock the 30-year-old wife and mother off her feet.
Her list of diagnoses read like punches that would bring down a prizefighter — ovarian, uterine and cervical cancer in 2006, then kidney cancer and a brain tumor, and then starting early this year the painful seizures for which doctors still can’t find an explanation, let alone a cure.
“Trust me, I could lay in my bed all day every day, and it would be easy,” she said. “But I know I can’t do that.”
Instead, Hartsgrove pulls herself up, all 82 pounds of her, and gets 6-year-old Jenna ready for school.
Even on the days she can barely walk, she often helps people in her Stuart neighborhood with their children, so much so that she’s described as the “neighborhood mom.”
Her motivation to fight is displayed on the walls all around her, where the photographed faces of two high school sweethearts and their pretty little girl smile out into the living room of a modestly decorated home where the rent is way past due.
Hartsgrove, a woman who used to run 12 miles a day but has lost nearly 100 pounds in the last year, has had to quit her job in medical billing. Chuck, a former chef, now works construction but often has to take time off when his wife is too sick to stay alone.
They have watched a truck tow away one of their cars after mounting medical bills forced them to have it voluntarily repossessed. They are still thousands behind on rent, hundreds behind on car payments for their remaining car, and owe more than $5,000 in medical bills.
Still, Hartsgrove says, the family fights, and wins, using the only weapon they have left. Love.
Hartsgrove remembers the day, after another devastating doctor’s appointment, when she saw her husband stand in their kitchen, put his head in his hands and cry.
She apologized, telling him she would have never let him marry her if she knew she would have gotten so sick.
“He told me he loved me with all his heart, and that he’d be with me until the end, no matter what,” she said.
For all of that love, Hartsgrove says, she thanks God.
And she’s grateful, too, for the spirit he gave her. “I’m thankful,” she says, “he made me a fighter.”

THE HARTSGROVES’ WISH

The Hartsgroves need about $3,000 to catch up on rent and car payments, and they owe about $5,000 in medical bills. Jenna’s Christmas wish list includes WebKinz-themed gifts and Barbie dolls, and the family could use a home computer.

Nominated by: House of Hope, 2484 SE Bonita Street Stuart, FL 34997 (772) 286-4673.

UPDATE

When she feels like she can no longer go on, Tracy Hartsgrove curls up with the pile of more than 130 letters from Amanda Gilson’s language arts students at Oslo Middle School in Vero Beach.

“If I had a lot of money, I would donate it all to you,” one student, Megan, wrote. “You’re so brave, hopeful and caring. You inspire us all.”

Aside from the letters, Hartsgrove - diagnosed with several forms of cancer and a brain tumor while suffering frequent, unexplainable seizures - has received more than $18,000 in donations from the public. The money will help her and her husband, Chuck, pay a few medical bills, catch up on their rent, pay off Chuck’s car, take a family trip and get the couple’s wedding rings out of the pawnshop.

Someone donated the family a computer, and several people donated Barbie dolls and WebKinz stuffed animals, the top item on 6-year-old Jenna’s Christmas list.

The past weeks have brought with them more medical troubles - cancerous cells in a tumor in her neck and worsening seizures that have almost forced her to be hospitalized - but the kindness of all those who donated money, gifts and letters have moved Hartsgrove to tears.

“I don’t know how I would have made it without each and every one of you,” she said.

JAIME MIRANDA

A new life for a boy, but eviction notices for his parents

By ANDREW ABRAMSON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

After waiting two years for the phone call of his life, and finally hearing that a kidney was available for his 2-year-old son Justin, Jaime Miranda was stuck in traffic, 100 miles away from Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Out of nowhere, from the back seat, Justin said, “Hey, Daddy, God is here.”
“I don’t know where he got that from, but all of a sudden we got an opening on the left hand side of the road and we made it in an hour and 50 minutes,” Miranda said.
A day later, Justin had his new kidney. But for Jaime Miranda, it’s still a constant struggle to care for his family of four sons, ages 2 to 18, while ensuring Justin has the best possible medical care.
The nightmare began two years ago in Puerto Rico, when Justin was several months old with two failing kidneys. There, the family risked waiting years for a new kidney. Instead, the Mirandas decided to leave, with little more than the clothes on their backs and small donations from the Salvation Army. They ended up in Stuart.
Jaime, who ran a cafeteria in Puerto Rico, landed a job at FPL. But with just one car in the family, any time Justin needs to visit Jackson Memorial, Jaime has to take off work.
Florida Power & Light agreed to the arrangement, although it means that Jaime can go days without pay when Justin is sick.
Agnes, Jaime’s wife, is a stay-at-home mom.
“We decided to just dedicate ourselves to Justin, for his life,” Jaime said. “This is a lifelong thing. I’ve been backed up on my bills, I’ve had four eviction notices. Sometimes I can’t work.”
In October, the family Jeep ­— sold to the Mirandas by a friend for $400 — caught fire during a trip to the grocery . Now the family must make car payments on a used Grand Marquis, which makes paying rent even more of a challenge.
But it’s all worth it when Jaime sees a huge smile on Justin’s face. If anything, the boy is more active than ever because many of his 15 daily medications boost energy. It can be a bit overwhelming for the family, but it’s so much better than watching Justin lying in bed, barely able to move.
Justin’s new kidney is expected to last only about 10 years, and the next one will last only about five.
“With stem cells and modern technology, maybe one day there will be an alternative where he won’t need another kidney ever again,” Miranda said. “I’m just hoping I can live to see my baby go to college, see my baby evolve into a normal child.”

THE MIRANDAS’ WISH

The Mirandas need a reliable vehicle to take baby Justin to and from his doctor’s appointments in Miami, as well as clothing, shoes, diapers for Justin (size five), and assistance with rent and utilities to help the family catch up with past-due monthly bills. While most important for the family are basic needs, they also need bedroom and living room furniture.

Nominated by: Salvation Army of Martin County, 901 Johnson Ave., Stuart, FL; (772) 288-1471.

UPDATE

For the first time since 2-year-old Justin Miranda received his new kidney, his family can breathe a small sigh of relief.

The Mirandas, nominated by The Salvation Army of Martin County, have received cash and two furniture donations. They have also had the rent paid for their Stuart apartment through February.

At FPL, where Justin’s father, Jaime, works, co-workers have been rallying to lend their help through employee services.

But most importantly, Justin is healthy.

“We are so grateful that people have been willing to help us in this time of need,” Miranda said.

EDITH BELLE SMITH

A home with heart, but little else

By Barbara Marshall
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

When life has been long and way too hard, shouldn’t there be sweet ease at the end? Or at least a few years of sitting comfortably on a porch surrounded by grandchildren?
Edith Belle Smith, 82, has the porch and Lord knows she has two adoring grandsons, both basketball stars at Martin County High School.
But ease and comfort? They’ve never found this address.
Edith Belle’s house, the one her stepfather built in Indiantown in 1945, is falling down and threatening to take her family’s precarious existence with it. Without help, they may soon be homeless.
Edith Belle left school at 12 and stepped into the migrant stream in the 1930s. For decades she followed the ripening crops, cooking for the field hands.
In the late 1960s she came home for good with Tawan, a baby girl who had been abandoned in the fields by her birth mother. She had to squeeze a dollar until it screamed, but Edith Belle raised Tawan by herself and always kept her beloved home.
Then poor health and bad luck made a difficult life nearly impossible.
In 2001, Edith Belle again took in Tawan and her two sons, Quamain, now 18, and Qunzi, 15, after Tawan’s husband was sent to prison.
Then hurricanes destroyed the roof and soaked the interior. Although FEMA money repaired the roof, the interior remains a moldy disaster with fallen ceilings and softened floorboards.
The mold contributed to Edith Belle’s already failing health. Last spring, Tawan quit work because the tough, hard-working woman who rescued her from the fields now required full-time care.
“We discussed it years ago that I would never let her go into a home. I owed her that,” says Tawan, 39.
Surviving on food stamps and Edith Belle’s Social Security payments leaves no money for home repairs. Without income, the family doesn’t qualify for home repair assistance programs.
As a result, Edith Belle’s little house is nearly as squalid as the labor camps she remembers. In the bathroom, the shower and bathtub have long since stopped working, forcing the family to take sponge baths in the sink. To keep away rats, rags fill the space where the barely functioning toilet has separated from the floor.
Edith Belle spends her days on her broken-down front porch trying to escape the toxins from moldy walls. She longs for a better home for the two bright spots in her life, Tawan’s lanky sons.
Quamain, a senior recognized by ESPN’s Rise magazine as a high school star, is being courted by several colleges, yet the family can’t afford to buy his senior pictures or a jacket for the three varsity sports letters he’s earned. Only in 10th grade, Qunzi is already on the varsity team.
Both are devoted to the grandmother Quamain credits with keeping him off Indiantown’s dark street corners.
“She taught us how people think in the streets and why we need to stay away,” he says.
But their haven from the streets can’t last much longer.

EDITH BELLE SMITH’S WISH

$30,000 to repair her home, including new plumbing, walls, floors and windows. $1,900 for new furniture and $350 for a computer. Class ring, senior pictures and letter jacket for Quamain, Christmas presents and clothes for both boys.

Nominated by the Council on Aging of Martin County, 1071 E. 10th St., Stuart, FL 34996 (772) 223-7800.

UPDATE

The Indiantown house 82-year-old Edith Belle Smith struggled all her life to keep is going to be repaired, thanks to generous Palm Beach Post readers.

Edith Belle, who was nominated by the Council on Aging of Martin County, is a former migrant worker who now requires constant care. Along with her adopted daughter and two grandsons - both basketball stars at Martin County High School - she has been living in a squalid hurricane-damaged house with rotting floors and broken plumbing. They survive on food stamps and Edith Belle’s Social Security payments.

Moved by their situation, Jim Geiger of Titan Resources in Palm Beach Gardens, and Frank Arena of Stuart, the project manager for a general contractor, will begin renovations next month.

While repairs are being made, Indiantown Non-Profit Housing will subsidize most of the rent on an apartment for the family. A group of anonymous donors gave Quamain, 18, who has a chance to go to college on a basketball scholarship, his letter jacket, senior picture, yearbook and class ring. The group also gave “Q” and his 15-year-old brother, Qunzi, an Xbox system for Christmas.

Other donations include $2,500 from the Frances Langford Foundation in Jensen Beach, a laptop computer and $7,000 from Season to Share readers which will be used to buy new furniture and pay the balance of rent on her apartment.

“This will be a new start for us,” said Tawan Foreman, Edith Belle’s daughter.

ERICA THOMAS

A little boost and this ‘blessed’ family could soar

By Anne Rodgers
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Erica Thomas is due at work by 9 on the dot. Her commute to west Delray Beach requires three buses and at least two hours, so Monday through Friday, she’s up at 5:30 a.m.
A 1989 Oldsmobile gathers dust in the driveway; its insurance is out of reach for this energetic and optimistic mother of two.
“Every day I walk by it and say, ‘I’ll be drivin’ you soon,’ ” she laughs.
Erica laughs a lot. Instead of focusing on 8-year-old Quinten’s enlarged heart, she gives thanks for Florida KidCare, the state insurance program that covered his Nov. 6 surgery.
Instead of bemoaning her one-bedroom apartment in a run-down neighborhood, she concentrates on the money she’s saving and dreams of the day she can give Quinten and 14-year-old Lateema the joy of decorating their own rooms.
Instead of dwelling on her diabetes or migraines, she praises her employers (internists who hired her as a medical assistant two years ago) and The Lord’s Place, which took her in when she wound up homeless, after making the wrenching decision to spend her rent money on funeral expenses for her mother.
“I was so stuck on my pride, but I finally made an appointment,” she said. “I got tired of going to the trunk to find clothes for my children and trying to find a place to sleep every night.”
Even so, when she pulled into the center’s parking lot, she cried.
“I didn’t want to be in a shelter. I’d never been in a situation where I couldn’t help myself or my kids. I didn’t want to depend on someone.”
But having nursed her mom for five years before her death in 2006, Erica was feeling fragile.
“The Lord’s Place helped me realize that everyone has struggles,” she said. “They helped me regroup and showed me the positive things in life. I’ve learned to not complain; instead I stop, pray, trust and just wait.”
Erica receives no help from Lateema’s father, a no show at a recent compliance hearing. Quinten’s dad left before he was born, returning to Nassau in the Bahamas, and Erica hasn’t heard from him since.
“I can’t stop being a mother just because they don’t want to be a daddy,” she said. “I’m blessed with two wonderful kids. They don’t have very many things, so they’re grateful. I’m not bragging, but you can put them in a crowd and they’re gonna make friends. People tend to get attached to them.”
That’s easy to believe. Lateema, a bright, happy girl, willingly gives up her after-school activities to watch her brother. And Quinten, always in motion, seems fully recovered, though Erica knows more heart surgery is ahead.
Meanwhile, the family waits patiently for things to get better. And Erica accepts her grueling commute as a necessary sacrifice.
“I love my job; I love helping people,” she said. “I’m good at what I do because it’s coming from the heart.”

ERICA THOMAS’ WISH

$200 a month for car insurance; $700 a month for Erica’s health insurance and medications. A computer for the kids with Hooked on Phonics and other educational programs. Gift cards for clothing for Quinten and Lateema or for family outings.

Nominated by The Lord’s Place, 2808 N. Australian Ave., West Palm Beach, FL 33407 (561) 494-0125

UPDATE

Donations from Season to Share have already made a huge difference in the life of single mother Erica Thomas and her two children. Perhaps the biggest blessing is the money to pay for six months of car insurance, which will give Erica back the four hours a day she spends on buses getting to and from work.

“I am bursting with joy,” said Erica, who was nominated by The Lord’s Place. “I’ll be able to get up and fix breakfast for the kids now and personally pick up Quinten, (who’s eight), from after-care. I’m very grateful - from the bottom of my heart.”

Until now, 14-year-old Lateema has been walking her brother home, giving up after-school activities to help her mom out. But a recent visit found Lateema giddy with excitement over two new pairs of athletic shoes.

“I’m going to run track,” she enthused. “I’m so excited.”

Meanwhile, Quinten, who’s recovering from surgery on his enlarged heart, was hugging everyone in sight, grinning ear-to-ear over the new toys scattered in the tiny living room.

His mother said he’d recently developed a bad ear infection, “but ain’t nothing stopping his show,” she laughed.

Season to Share donors have also made it possible for Erica to pay for her diabetes supplies for the next six months, an expense that had become too much for her. The family lives in a one-bedroom apartment while Erica attempts to save money for a more suitable home.

Erica, who works at a doctor’s office in Delray Beach, said many of her patients have also helped out. As usual for this young mother, she was thinking of how to give back.

“Now that I’ll be driving, I can go visit two of my patients who are sick,” she said. “They’ve been so good to me.”

DAVID STRAUSS

Getting weaker, but still going strong

By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

At first, no one could figure out what was wrong with the Strauss brothers.

Iris Strauss became worried when her four sons reached elementary school and began to have problems such as muscle weakness, tremors and slurred speech.

After many guesses and tests, doctors discovered that all four boys have late-onset Tay-Sachs, a genetic condition that disproportionately affects Jewish families of Eastern European ancestry. Babies who are born with the disease lack an enzyme that prevents the accumulation of fatty deposits in their nerve cells. Few live to see their 4th birthdays.

David Strauss, now 40, and his three brothers have a rare form of Tay-Sachs that left them with enough of the enzyme to survive. But gradually, the disease is robbing David of his ability to walk.

For five years, Strauss worked in the kitchen of a hotel in Boca Raton, a job that he loved. He was named employee of the month several times, but had to leave when he began falling and cutting himself while trying to chop food.

He then took a maintenance job at a rest stop on Florida’s Turnpike. But he had to leave that job, too, when he became too weak to walk without crutches.

Though he has worked for most of his life, his only income now is $742 a month from Social Security, along with $86 in food stamps. Strauss’ speech is badly slurred now, and his muscles are getting weaker. Soon, he will need a wheelchair.

Strauss does what he can to stay active. Four days a week, he takes a bus to the Palm Beach Habilitation Center to learn computer skills, though the $4 round-trip fare is a struggle. And when he had to leave his gym because of falls, he got a home exercise bike that helps him slow the degeneration of his muscles.

Iris Strauss, 64, who works as an accountant, was once able to help him in and out of the pool at her home. One of David’s greatest joys was going swimming or just floating on a raft, she said. But without a lift to get him out, David can no longer go in the water.

Iris Strauss and her partner help with cleaning and small repairs at the small house west of Lake Worth that David shares with his brother, Eric. But it is increasingly hard for the brothers to get around the bathroom they share, which is too small to accommodate a wheelchair.

David recently fell hard in the bathroom, ending up with a black eye that made him look as if he had been in a fight.

“The floor won,” he quipped.

Through so much loss, Iris Strauss said, David has kept his kind nature - and sharp sense of humor.

“He’s just such a good person,” she said.

DAVID STRAUSS’ WISH

Strauss would love enough money to renovate his bathroom with a walk-in shower and a door wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. He also needs a small Hoveround vehicle that would replace his walker, which is becoming more difficult for him to use without falling. He could also use an electric razor that won’t break if he drops it, as well as vouchers for groceries and Palm Tran Connection. His dream is to have a lift that would allow him to get in and out of the swimming pool at his mother’s house.

Nominated by: Palm Beach Habilitation Center, Inc., 4522 South Congress Ave. Lake Worth, FL 33461 (561) 965-8500

UPDATE

When Shelley Siegel read about brothers David and Eric Strauss, who suffer from a rare genetic disease that makes it difficult for them to speak and walk, she called immediately to offer her help.

Siegel was touched by David Strauss’ simple wishes, including a bathroom where he wouldn’t hurt himself or fall.

“This was such a practical request, and something that can really change a life,” she said.

As owner of Siegel Design Group in Lake Worth, she has experience designing accessible homes. Many groups, including Rebuilding Together of the Palm Beaches, volunteered free labor, and Siegel asked contractors to provide the fixtures and appliances. Soon after the New Year, David Strauss will have a brand-new bathroom.

His mother, Iris Strauss, said she cried when she heard about the gift.

“David is just so overwhelmed and grateful,” she said.

AMY MILLER
Lake Worth

Against all odds, family’s thriving but needs some help

Amy Miller’s tiny, sparsely furnished apartment has one thing she’s always wished for: a happy son.
Now if she could just get her family back on its feet.
Miller, 29, is the single mother of two boys, Clayton, age 4, and newborn Larry. She lives in Lake Worth with Steve Buchanan, Larry’s father, who has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair.
From the basics, like food and clothing for her kids, to dependable transportation, to help getting her GED so she can get a job, Miller simply wants to take care of her family. She’s a hard worker, but her sporadic work history — she’s had more than two dozen jobs in four years — mirrors her son Clayton’s hospitalizations.
Clayton was born with hypotonia, sometimes called Floppy Infant Syndrome, a condition characterized by decreased muscle tone. Every muscle is affected, but as an infant, Clayton could not suck properly, so he was malnourished, and he couldn’t move his bowels properly, which landed him in the hospital for surgery to remove painful intestinal blockages.
Clayton must get nourishment through a feeding tube and had to have a colostomy. At 3, he weighed only 20 pounds. “It was devastating,” Miller said. “All I cared about was saving my son.”
Miller’s world brightened when she met Steve Buchanan, 39, about a year ago. Buchanan is upbeat, attentive and hopeful. He and Clayton, whom Buchanan would like to adopt legally, “connect on a different level,” Buchanan said.
Soon after meeting Buchanan, Clayton started to thrive. He learned to walk. He gained weight. He learned to speak 10 or 15 words, and he’s doing well at Royal Palm School in Lantana.
Life is still a struggle, but it’s getting better. “This whole kid’s life has been in and out of surgery, but we haven’t been to the hospital in a very long time,” Miller said, knocking on the wooden table at her elbow.
Six months ago, doctors diagnosed Clayton with Hirschsprung’s disease, a condition in which nerves of the intestine don’t develop properly.
Clayton cries through the painful daily procedure to change his colostomy bag, but the family is hoping that his intestines will someday return to normal and that the colostomy can be reversed.
Clayton enjoys the few toys he has, including a big red truck he pushes up and down the hallway. He laughs, then climbs onto Buchanan’s lap and caresses his face. He also loves his new little brother, Larry, now 2 months old.
After the baby was born, Buchanan made sure to give Clayton extra attention. “I didn’t want him to feel loved any less,” Buchanan said. “I’m the only father he’s ever known.”
Miller’s goals for her family are “to keep a job long enough for us to get ahead” and “to become a nurse. My dream has always been helping people,” she said. But she needs to complete her GED before she can apply, and Buchanan needs to be able to care for the children while Miller is at work or school.
For Buchanan, the answer is much simpler: “Normalcy,” he says. “That’s all I want.”
- Janis Fontaine

The Millers’ Wish
A van with a lift for Buchanan’s wheelchair. Updated bathroom and kitchen fixtures suitable for a handicapped person, and a front-loading washer and dryer. A bed Miller and Buchanan can share (Buchanan’s hospital bed is too small for both of them). Handicap-accessible crib and changing table. Basic items, including food, diapers, clothing for Miller and the kids. Gift cards to Publix or Target, or gas cards. Tuition for Amy to get her GED, and for a two-year nursing program. Toys for the kids, and maybe a trip to the spa for Amy.

Nominated by: Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches
Address: 1712 Second Ave. N., Lake Worth.
Phone: (561) 253-1361
Its mission: Adopt-A-Family is dedicated to restoring families in crisis to stability and self-sufficiency by providing access to all-encompassing services for families with children.

NICOLE RIVERA
Jupiter

Bad year: Father killed, daughter sick with leukemia

This time last year, they were pretty much a regular family with all the regular stuff. Mom, dad, grown kids, one in college, grandchildren, the regular hard financial times.
This year, though …
It is both unbelievable and heartbreaking what can happen in one year.
The daughter is sick, very sick, with a weird kind of leukemia that has kept her in the hospital for about six of the past seven months.
She’s had to quit college.
The mom is basically homeless, having to give up her apartment because she can’t work full-time because she’s always at the hospital.
The dad is dead, gone, hit by a truck crossing the street.
“I thought she was just depressed because her dad had just died,” said Wanda Laracuente, 45, mother of Nicole Rivera, 19.
But it turned out Rivera, an ROTC graduate from Jupiter High School’s medical magnet program, has leukemia — the kind with an asterisk.
Pre-B-Cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with PH positive.
It’s the PH positive that’s the worst part, the part that’s complicating her recovery.
“I never in a million years would have imagined this,” Wanda says.
Nor this:
Dec. 19, 2006. Nelson Rivera, 46, was in Lakeland helping his sister, and he walked to the store to buy a pack of smokes. He used his cellphone to call the family in Jupiter.
Yes. Everything went well. We got her moved.
I’m headed home.
When he left the store, Nelson Rivera was fatally hit by a Ford F-150 truck as he crossed the street. Police said it was his fault.
By March, Nicole Rivera, attending Florida Career College in Okeechobee so she could become a medical office administrator, was tired all the time.
One night at work, she collapsed — just fell flat on the floor at her job at Winn-Dixie. That was Feb. 3, and it took more than a month to get the diagnosis.
Wanda said they wanted to send them home, label Nicole their “mystery child,” but Laracuente would have none of that.
And leukemia, it was.
There’s been chemo, hospitals stays, no real family income. Too sick to even walk — or go “out in the world,” as she calls it — Nicole’s on the list for a bone-marrow transplant. Recently, she was back at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital on 45th Street in West Palm Beach.
But all this lying around — waiting, wondering, wishing — has given her time to tinker with her goals.
“I was thinking of working for a small clinic,” she said. “But now I’ve decided to change my major to working with kids like me.”
Kids who smile and laugh and have sense enough to cry when circumstances get quite dire. Kids who won’t stop fighting.

Nicole Rivera’s wishes

What she asked for: Money for car payments, car insurance, college debts and an apartment. She also asked for a massage, manicure and pedicure for her mom.

What she received: Nicole and her mom now have an apartment. Money will be applied to college debts, car payments and insurance. Nicole received a $50,000 donation from a foundation.

What she said: “I can’t believe how generous people are and how they’ve reached out in such a loving way,” says Nicole, who remains on a bone-marrow transplant waiting list.

Nominated by: Pediatric Oncology Support Team (POST) Program at Child Life Institute
Address: 5325 Greenwood Ave. No. 301. West Palm Beach, FL 33407
Telephone: (561) 882-6336
Its mission: Nonprofit psychological support team dedicated to helping children with cancer, and their families.

BENJEARLENE NELSON
Royal Palm Beach

Blindness, house fire can’t keep mother of two down

Even though she’s legally blind, Benjearlene Nelson has always had a clear vision of her future: to be a strong example to her children by owning a home, and to build a career by which she could support her family and help others.
But adversity has created far more darkness than the infection that destroyed Nelson’s left eye nine years ago.
In 2002, after an argument, her husband doused the couple’s West Palm Beach house with gasoline and set it afire with her two children inside.
Thankfully, no one was hurt, and Nelson, who also suffers from chronic liver and hip problems, escaped the abusive relationship.
“I knew I had a choice to either lose my kids and sink into the ground or get off my butt and do something,” she says. “But I thought, who’s going to hire me?”
Determined to succeed without a partner or public assistance, the single mom, now 37, got a telemarketing job in 2003 through a Social Security program that allowed her to work without losing her federal disability health coverage.
She quickly soared to top salesperson.
Her story was so inspiring that the West Palm Beach native, who grew up in Dunbar Village, testified before a congressional panel in Washington about the “Ticket to Work” program.
A year later, she joined Gulfstream Goodwill Industries, where she teaches life skills to adults with disabilities at a Boynton Beach rehabilitation facility.
Her second job, as a companion to adults with disabilities, helped her save enough money to buy a home in Royal Palm Beach.
Although she’d finally achieved that dream, Nelson’s happy ending didn’t last long.
Lightning struck the house in September, forcing Nelson and her two children — Adrian Nixon, 20, a college student, and younger sibling Greivondra Cobb, 18 — to move out while smoke damage was repaired.
The blaze may have destroyed the kitchen, but not Nelson’s fighting spirit or tireless work ethic.
“She’s such a powerful example of someone who won’t give up despite overwhelming hardship,” says Cal Miller, vice president of marketing at Gulfstream Goodwill. “All of us just love her.”
Nelson, who’s quick with a smile and hug for everyone she meets, says her faith sustains her.
“There are so many times I’ve wanted to throw in the towel, but then I think that this is just another test,” she says. “I believe that I’m here to give testimony that if you believe in God and take it one day at a time, you’ll survive.”

Benjearlene Nelson’s wishes

What she asked for: Money to help pay for eye surgery, property taxes, home repairs, groceries and a student loan. Also, a full-sized bed, clothes and linens.

What she received: An eye specialist donated cataract surgery. There were also donations of a bedroom set, linens and money to help pay Nelson’s home insurance, taxes and renovations.

What she said: “She has been so overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from the community that it’s shocked her,” says Cal Miller, vice president of marketing for Gulfstream Goodwill. “Through all that happened to her, she has always remained optimistic, and she believes God will pull her through. It’s been phenomenal. When she found out she was nominated, she sobbed uncontrollably. To have money after a string of rotten luck means everything to her.”

Nominated by: Gulfstream Goodwill Industries
Address: 1715 Tiffany Drive E., West Palm Beach, FL 33407
Phone: (561) 848-7200
Its mission: To help people with disabilities and other barriers to employment to become self-sufficient, working members of the community.

TRACEY UNDERWOOD
Fort Pierce

Stroke keeps mother of five jobless, helpless

Tracey Underwood doesn’t want to ask for help.
She wants to work and provide for her four children, take them to church and buy them shoes and school clothes, and bikes to ride through the neighborhood.
She wants to give them a good life. But she can’t. Not without help.
Tracey, 37, suffered a stroke in June that left her paralyzed on her left side. She can’t cook, drive or even write. She can barely get around the house.
“Cooking has been left up to my daughter and my son,” she says. “And I can’t do my own hair; my daughter has to do my hair. Even eating is difficult.”
Originally from Clinton, N.C., Tracey moved to Boca Raton about 20 years ago. A single mother, she worked as an administrative assistant and later as a telemarketer. But one income wasn’t enough to support a family of five.
“I’m a strong person,” says Tracey, who receives no child support. “I said, ‘I can’t let this beat me, I won’t let this beat me.’ But it beat me. It had to really sink in before I realized I couldn’t do it on my own.”
Last year, she and her children — Tion Gabriel, 19, Termaine Cime, 16, Tanasia Cime, 15, and Torrian Bradley, 7 — became homeless. She sought shelter for her family at the Lord’s Place in Boynton Beach.
“I couldn’t continue to pay the high rent that was getting higher every year,” Tracey says.
With the help of the Lord’s Place, things were starting to turn around this year.
“I had just started a brand new job June 19,” says Tracey. “I worked three days: that Monday, that Tuesday and that Wednesday. That Wednesday night was when I had my stroke.”
Tracey was hospitalized for a month. The teens were often left on their own for days or weeks at a time.
When Tracey was released from medical care, the family was reunited in a government-subsidized housing project in Boynton Beach. Food stamps help keep them from going hungry, but medical bills continue to mount.
Tracey, says Odetta Gintoli of Families First of Palm Beach County, which is helping the family, “contacts and makes her own doctors’ appointments and advocates for herself and tries to stay stress-free so that she can heal.”
Medicaid covers the cost of doctor visits and the two blood pressure medications Tracey takes daily, but Gintoli says the coverage will be reevaluated in December. Tracey says physical therapy that could help her regain strength in her left hand is not covered, so she has gone without.
“I just miss being independent, to be honest with you,” Tracey says. “It’s really, really hard.”

Tracey Underwood’s wishes

What she asked for: Money to pay bills and buy clothes for her children and herself, bicycles for the kids, a computer printer and an electric can opener.

What she received: $400 in Wal-Mart gift cards, bikes and toys for the kids, and clothing for the family. Donations that have come to Families First will be applied to bills. She also received a computer printer and scanner.

What she said: “I’ve been blessed this year, and I’ve come to the realization that there are still people in this world who have kind hearts,” says Tracey. “I didn’t have to go through Christmas 2007 alone.”

Nominated by: Families First of Palm Beach County
Address: 601 N. Congress Ave., Suite 430, Delray Beach, FL 33445
Phone: (561) 243-8668.
Its mission: To create opportunities with families to embrace their hope, strength and potential for change.

KENTRELL BECKLES
West Palm Beach

Brain tumor threatens boy’s life, family’s future

Not long after Kentrell Beckles started kindergarten, he hurt himself while playing.
“He had run into a pole,” said his mother, Tangela Guess. “Just ran into it, and I said, ‘Kentrell, didn’t you see the pole?’ I knew there was no way he saw it.”
Tangy, 23, took her son, the oldest of her three boys, for an eye exam that fall, in 2005. It led to a frightening diagnosis.
Kentrell, now 7, has a potentially fatal brain tumor.
Kentrell has had two surgeries, the most recent a few weeks ago when about half of the malignant tumor was removed. Surgeons can’t get to the part of the tumor closest to the optic nerve to remove it.
“Kentrell’s sight in his left eye is zero,” says his mom, “and his right eye is 20/400. He has no peripheral vision.”
Tangy, who was working full time as a lab technician when Kentrell was diagnosed, had to quit work to care for him and his brothers, Rodney, 4, and Leon, 2.
Then the car quit once and for all, leaving her to memorize train schedules from her home in West Palm Beach to Miami and bus schedules to the Nicklaus Children’s Hospital at St. Mary’s Medical Center for his treatment. Kentrell faces daily radiation treatments for six weeks.
Tangy gets by on Social Security disability — $620 a month — and $230 each month in food stamps. Her medical bills for Kentrell are paid in full by Medicaid.
“Kentrell has good days and bad days,” she says, “but now more bad days than good days. He can go outside, but now his legs are starting to bother him.”
For starters, Tangy needs a car to take her son for treatments. Now it takes a full day — with all three kids — to get treatment in West Palm Beach. Tri-Rail to Miami is an overnight stay with friends or her sister.
She never gets a break for a long bath, a walk or even short time away from the boys. She doesn’t have any relatives locally that she can count on for help.
“Pretty much it’s just me and him 24/7,” Tangy says, smiling. “Kentrell is not my sick baby. He’s just my child.”

Kentrell Beckles’ wishes

What Tangy asked for: Cash, gas cards and gift cards for clothing, furniture, toys and groceries.

What she received: Kentrell received the No. 1 wish on his list - Legos - and Rodney and Leon got plush toys that they love. Also, from anonymous donors, $200 gift cards to Wal-Mart and $200 for Target, plus groceries from Willye Watson’s Riviera Beach food bank. The members of Tangy’s church, Peaceful Zion Missionary Baptist, have provided transportation to Kentrell’s radiation and other treatments, plus cash. In addition, Tangy’s brother, Junior, held a toy drive in Miami, which brought more toys for the boys.

What she says: “I’ll remember how these toys made Kentrell smile. Just people wanting to help have increased his will, his wanting to get better. This has helped strengthen the bond for our family. I’ll remember it forever.”

Nominated by: The Pediatric Oncology support team at The Child Life Institute
Address: 5325 Greenwood Ave. #301, West Palm Beach, FL 33407.
Phone: (561) 882-6336
Its mission: The POST team is a psychological and social support team dedicated to helping children with cancer and their families.

MARIA ISABEL GONZALEZ
Belle Glade

Overcoming cancer, mom stays ’strong’ for kids lacking clothes

For Maria Isabel Gonzalez, the painful surgery and daylong chemotherapy sessions to battle ovarian cancer were difficult.
But feeling like she could not be a good mother was harder still.
Derailed by her illness, Maria couldn’t buy clothes for her daughters, Guadalupe and Jessica, or help 7-year-old Gabriel with his spelling words.
Maria, a Mexican immigrant who lives in Belle Glade with her children and her husband, Gabriel, was diagnosed last year. She worked at McDonald’s until two days before her surgery, but since then, directed by insurance and referrals, she has jumped from one doctor’s office to another to battle the disease.
“I put myself in God’s hands,” she said. “I had to be strong. I have three children. I have to be strong for what can come my way.”
Her path to recovery has been full of struggle. The worst, Maria said, was when her son asked why she had no hair, or why she couldn’t walk with him to the mall.
Maria’s treatment kept her away from the work force and away from her kids. She remembers always being tired after chemotherapy, without any strength to help her children with homework or cook a warm meal.
“I would get a fever, and I couldn’t even stand up,” she recalled.
Financial struggles also followed. Gabriel had to quit his job in the fields to take Maria from their Belle Glade home to the doctor’s office in Boca Raton.
Maria’s cancer has been in remission for six months, although the chemotherapy left a trace. She has high blood pressure and stomach pains, and must take medication to lessen the pain in her bones.
She is now trying to get back on her feet. She drives to ESOL classes every week, and takes her kids to the mall on weekends.
Gabriel has returned to work, but the family’s finances have been devastated. They cannot afford clothes and shoes for the children, or that bedroom set 15-year-old Guadalupe needs to make her tiny bedroom more comfortable.
Maria’s wish is that her children have something new to wear to begin the new year.

Maria Isabel Gonzalez’s Wish
The family’s most pressing need is for clothes and shoes for the children, and bedroom furniture for their 15-year-old daughter. The kids would also love a small television, a computer, a PlayStation with games, an iPod and a children’s bicycle.

Nominated by: Palm Beach County Farmworker Jobs & Education Program
Address: 810 Datura St., West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Phone: (561) 355-4793
Its mission: To provide education and training to farmworkers and their dependents to help them obtain year-round, permanent employment.

GISSELLE GONZALEZ
Belle Glade

Child’s brain tumor delivers blow to family’s hopes

The photograph of the little girl with the long, flowing, coffee-colored hair collects dust atop the TV of her family’s cramped trailer home in Belle Glade. She is Gisselle Gonzalez, 4, a shy girl with a sweet disposition.
The photograph was taken before Aug. 20, before the day doctors gave her parents the most devastating news of their lives: There was an aggressive, cancerous tumor growing at the base of Gisselle’s brain, causing severe headaches, dizziness and drooling.
Four days later, the girl underwent surgery, but doctors could not remove the entire tumor. They put her on chemotherapy and radiation, but if the treatment falls short, the remaining tumor may threaten Gisselle’s life.
Gisselle has lost her hair and cannot walk steadily on her own. Still, the girl’s parents, Rita and Jose Gonzalez, have faith their only daughter will be healed. They know the odds are against them. They’re poor, dependent on government assistance and the kindness of loved ones and strangers.
Rita, 28, must stay home to care for Gisselle and her younger son, Ezequiel, age 1. Her older son, Jose Jr., is 7.
Jose, 31, was laid off from his job a week after Gisselle’s surgery. A glitch on his Social Security ID has forced him to halt his job search. When that matter gets resolved, he hopes to find a job driving a bulldozer or working construction. For the time being, the family subsists on Gisselle’s $623 monthly disability check and $524 food-stamp allotment.
Rita believes there’s a greater purpose to her family’s suffering.
“I would say this happened because God wanted us to be more faithful to him,” she says. “It was very shocking in the beginning, but there’s a reason for everything.”
Gisselle’s diagnosis, she says, has brought the family together. Her brother, Lazaro, visited from San Diego. Her sister, Norma Leticia, came to visit from Brownsville, Texas.
As she gives Gisselle her medication each day through a tube in the girl’s stomach, and counts the days between doctor visits, scans and spinal taps, Rita dreams the dreams she’s always had for her daughter.
She wants to watch her play outside. She wants to help her with her homework. She wants to take her to Disney World. She wants to comb her long, beautiful hair again.
In the meantime, she prays.
“We can’t ask God, ‘Why did you do this to me?’ ” says Rita. “We should ask instead, ‘For what reason?’ ”

The Gonzalezes’ wishes

What they asked for: Air-conditioners, food and gas gift cards, clothes for Gisselle and her brothers. Gisselle loves Dora the Explorer toys and wanted a Power Wheels Barbie Jammin’ Jeep.
What she received: The third-grade class at Binks Forest Elementary in Wellington dedicated the cost of their class party to give cash and gifts to Gisselle. Rhonda Levine and her daughter, Amberley Gin, donated a Barbie Power Wheels car and Dora the Explorer toys and clothes. The Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative gave the Gonzalez family two bikes, clothes, shoes, diapers, toys, games, $600 in cash and pest-control service for a year. The nurses at Palms West Hospital donated Dora the Explorer sheets and diapers. And Connor Moran Children’s Cancer Foundation used donations from Post readers to set up the family with a 1999 Toyota Camry, complete with car insurance and gas cards, food cards and a boy’s bike.
What she said: “To see the tears in mom’s eyes as we gave her the keys, and the smiles on her children’s face is what the Season to Share program is all about,” says Teri Van Buren Moran, Connor Moran executive director.

Nominated by: Connor Moran Children’s Cancer Foundation
Address: 825 U.S. Highway 1, Suite 200, Jupiter, FL 33477
Phone: (561) 741-1144
Its mission: To improve the quality of life, strengthen and stabilize South Florida families who face the devastation and uncertainty of cancer.

SYLVIA VILLANUEVA
South Bay

Illness, bad luck don’t shake mom’s faith in studious son

Juan “Tony” Villanueva is an exemplary 16-year-old boy, an honor student at Glades Central High who is also taking dual-enrollment classes at Palm Beach Community College.
The South Bay teen is working to earn his Eagle Scout badge and has been invited to participate as a student ambassador in a People to People International program in Europe next summer.
But perhaps his greatest distinction is his devotion to his mother, Sylvia, who can no longer work due to injuries she suffered on the job several years ago.
Sylvia injured her neck, back and knee working in a supermarket and eventually had to quit after 25 years on the job. She also suffers from fibromyalgia, glaucoma and digestive disorders.
Tony is the younger of her two sons, the boy who helps his mother cook and deliver food to the elderly during the holidays, the boy who always lends a hand with the household chores, the boy who dreams of a career in psychology or criminal justice.
“I want to succeed,” says Tony. “I want to prove that Hispanics, no matter how disadvantaged, can achieve whatever they aspire to.”
The Villanueva household, physically battered during the hurricane season of 2005, suffered even more devastating blows in recent months: Sylvia’s husband, her high school sweetheart and the father of her sons, left her after 20 years of marriage.
Even worse, older son, 19-year-old Jose “Frankie” Francisco, was nearly killed in a car crash. He says he was chased, then crashed the car, and was robbed and left for dead. Unable to walk away from the wreck with a broken hip, he waited all night until a jogger found him.
While Frankie is convalescing at home, he is unable to help support his mother and brother, as he had been doing. He faces months of rehabilitation.
“I want to get better, clear up my medical issues, so I can work again and take care of my sons,” says Sylvia, 41, a Pahokee-born, Belle Glade-raised woman. “I don’t like to be sick.”
Luckily, Sylvia’s family is a tight-knit bunch — her mother lives down the street, and her sister a few miles away. Athough family members pitch in with groceries and emotional support, Sylvia is burdened with daunting medical bills and the costs of repairing a home that is falling apart.
With her older son’s medical expenses mounting, she is facing her most desperate hour. What keeps her going through lingering and often debilitating depression is the unsinkable spirit she sees in son, Tony. She dreams of being able to send him on the People to People study tour but is afraid he may not get a grant for the program.
Even her older son marvels at the younger boy’s drive:
“He’s straight books,” says Frankie. “He’s the one who’s going to pull us through.”

The Villanuevas’ wishes

What they asked for: Money to pay medical expenses and to repair their home.

What they received: Sylvia is organizing her medical bills so they can be paid. She got a sofa bed and a new stove.

What she said: “Even though there are people who don’t know you, they’re willing to help you out,” says Sylvia.

Nominated by: Take Stock in Children of Palm Beach County
Address: 230 S. Dixie Highway, Suite 200, Lake Worth, FL, 33460
Phone: (561) 582-3765
Its mission: Providing four-year, full-tuition scholarships, caring mentors and hope for a better life to deserving students from low-income families throughout Palm Beach County.

VALDER GIBSON
Hobe Sound

Grandparents raising five kids ‘wouldn’t trade them for nothing in the world’

Why is doing the right thing so rarely the easy thing?
If Valder and Nathaniel Gibson had a spare second to ponder philospohical questions, that’s one they might tackle.
But it’s up to us to say that the good, right thing this Hobe Sound couple is doing is harder than anything most of us have ever attempted.
They’re raising five — soon to be six — grandchildren, ages 2 to 10.
“They need to be with family,” says Valder, 54.
When Valder’s daughter couldn’t care for her children, the couple gathered up the kids in their strong arms — arms that are used to hard work, but maybe not this hard — and made room for them in their lives and in their hearts.
“Your old life stops, and you have to start all over again,” laughs Valder, 54, who somehow maintains her sense of humor while children tumble like puppies around her way-too-tiny house.
The arrangement that was supposed to be temporary became permanent just before Christmas last year.
Valder’s estranged 30-year-old daughter, Chelsea — the children’s mother — died of MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, shortly after giving birth to her seventh child.
“I couldn’t let them go to the state,” Valder says. “They would have been separated.”
Five of the kids, ages 3 to 10, are living with the Gibsons. They hope to get custody of Lailah, 2, now in foster care. Valder’s other daughter is raising the baby boy who never knew his mother.
For a while, the kids lived with friends. Then, Nathaniel found a house in Hobe Sound they could rent cheaply. It has two bedrooms and one bathroom.
“We helped Granny clean the whole inside,” says Aaliyha proudly. At 10, she’s the oldest, quick and smart in that I-can-rule-the-world way fifth-graders have.
Because the house is so small, the scruffy front yard is the kids’ only playroom. Snakes and a malfunctioning septic tank put the back yard off limits.
Valder works the night shift and as much overtime as possible at an assisted living center. Her job pays for the family’s insurance.
Nathaniel, 48, is a part-time handyman who is looking for a job with better pay. In the afternoons, he drives Jailyn, 7, to football practice and Aaliyha and Kashia, 9, to praise dancing at their Missionary Baptist Church.
Each night, Nathaniel serves them the dinner Valder makes before going to work. The worn wooden table is so tiny they have to eat in shifts. Nathaniel checks homework amd tucks them into the two sets of bunk beds, where the littlest girls share a mattress.
“I wouldn’t trade them for nothing in the world,” says this warm bear hug of a man.
When Valder gets home at midnight, she folds laundry while sorting her own list of worries: How can we rent a larger house? Will their aging van make it another week? How will they pay for Kashia’s hearing aid and a specialist for JaKailyn, 3, who walks on her toes? What if the four who have asthma get sick all at the same time?
“I’ll be 70 when the last one graduates from high school,” she says with a sigh.

The Gibson family’s wishes

What they asked for: Money to rent a larger house and make car repairs, and to buy the children Christmas presents to make up for last year’s holiday when their mother died.
What they received: Port St. Lucie dentist Dr. Aaron Schamback donated dental work for Nathaniel. Donations are being used to move the family to a better apartment. They bought bikes and other gifts with donated gift cards. A computer has been donated.
What they said: “It’s been a blessed Christmas,” says Valder. Adds her husband, Nathaniel, “This is the best Christmas we’ve had in a long, long time. There are kind people out there.”

Nominated by: Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Martin County
Address: 5033 S.E. Federal Highway Stuart, FL 34997
Phone: (772) 283-8373
Its mission: Provide professionally managed one-to-one mentoring to children to help them succeed.

CHARLES JOHNSON
Lake Worth

Grandpa, 4-year-old share love, tattered trailer

While it’s true that Charles Johnson has given his 4-year-old grandson, Alex, a place to live, it’s equally true that Alex has given Charles a reason to live.
“He’s made my life so much better,” says Charles, 70. “He’s not the only one benefiting from this. It’s more me than him.”
Alex’s mother is addicted to drugs and lives out of state. No other family members stepped up to care for Alex. They even tried to dissuade Charles from adopting Alex when he was a baby.
He wouldn’t hear of it.
“I said, ‘No way,’ ” says Johnson, who has five children, 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. “Back in the olden days, family took care of family.”
Their caseworker at Families First of Palm Beach County, Krista Stone, says the love shared by Alex and his “Papa” is “almost infectious.”
Their most pressing need is new housing. Two twin beds (Alex’s is made up with a colorful dinosaur quilt) take up almost all the space in the only bedroom of the decrepit trailer they share in Lake Worth.
The trailer lost most of its awnings during the hurricanes, but termites have rendered the worst damage, creating holes in the floor and walls that require constant patching.
The bathroom ceiling leaks, the kitchen sink and counter are falling apart, and there’s no electricity in half the living area.
“The repairs … I don’t even know what they would cost,” Charles says.
And the trailer park where they live is no place for a child. Traffic moves too quickly on the narrow streets for Alex to ride his bike, and there’s no playground.
“My dream is to get Alex out of here,” Johnson says.
Charles collects a $1,106 Social Security check each month, and, as Charles’ dependent, Alex recently began receiving $553 a month from Social Security as well.
“I know my way around buying cheap,” Charles says. “But every time you save a few dollars, something happens.”
For example, it took Charles eight years to save enough money to buy his 1993 Saturn, and he’s worried it’s developing transmission problems.
Next to the worn sofa in the living room are Alex’s toy cars and trains — most of which are hand-me-downs. He also has many books and educational DVDs, and Charles would love it if Alex received a few educational games for Christmas.
If only someone could promise Charles longevity …
“I worry a lot about dying,” says Charles, whose medical history includes a minor stroke, pneumonia and multiple hip replacements.
Nevertheless, he rides his bike daily and does aerobics twice a week through the SilverSneakers Fitness Program. “I’m trying to make myself live longer,” he says.
“I want to live for him.”

Charles and Alex Johnson’s wishes

What he asked for: Multiple repairs for their decrepit trailer in Lake Worth, which is in a trailer park that isn’t child-friendly. Also, games and a bicycle for Alex.

What he received: A Park Vista High School English class collected cash, gift cards and toys totaling about $1,000. Alex now has a bicycle and educational games. Season to Share cash will be used toward a new mobile home when all the money has come in.

What he says: “It’s overwhelming. I didn’t think there was that many nice people in the world. I don’t know if it’s a result of a hard life, but I’m overwhelmed with the cards and the money that has come in. It’s given me a whole new life. I would have raised my grandson no matter what, but this has made my life so much easier.”

Nominated by: Families First of Palm Beach County
Address: 1720 E. Tiffany Dr., Suite 101, West Palm Beach, FL 33407
Phone: (561) 881-5572
Its mission: To create opportunities with families to embrace their hope, strength and potential for change.

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SILVIA HERRERA
Boca Raton

With husband gone, mother wonders how family will survive

Silvia Herrera kneels at her husband’s grave in Deerfield Beach Memorial Cemetery and lets out a sob. The tears come next, streaming down her face.
She looks down and caresses the blades of grass. “Maico, why did you leave me? Your daughters need you.”
Maico and Silvia met 15 years ago, when Silvia worked in a tomato-packing company in Boca Raton.
He liked her, she said, from the first day he laid eyes on her. She found him annoying. But he was persistent, and three months later, they were a couple.
“He was very sweet,” Silvia said.
Another three months passed, and Maico asked Silvia to move with him to Indiana.
“No,” she responded. “If you want, we can get married, but just like that, I won’t leave.”
So he proposed the next day, and they traveled to Miami to marry.
Jenifer, now 14, arrived a year later, and then Gabriela, now 8.
“Sometimes, we would have monetary problems, but we were happy,” Silvia said. “The four of us were really happy.”
For the 15 years they were together, Maico worked hard to give his family everything he didn’t have when he was growing up. He bought a mobile home in Boca Raton, took his wife on short trips to celebrate their anniversaries, and made sure his daughters had all they wanted and needed, from dolls to a computer to do homework.
On Aug. 28, Maico woke up early to take his daughters to school. At 7:14 a.m. he called Silvia to let her know that he had dropped them off and was on his way to pick up some friends who needed a ride.
“I love you very much,” he said before hanging up.
At 8:04 a.m. he called again. He was short of breath.
“Chevy, I don’t feel well,” he told Silvia.
He told her where he was, and then she asked, “Are you OK?” He never answered.
Maico had been in an automobile accident. When Silvia arrived at the scene, her husband was still in his car.
Now, she says, “I still can’t believe that he is dead. I wait for him (every night), and he doesn’t come home, and he is not coming home.”
She is still waiting to hear from the medical examiner to know whether Maico died from the accident or heart failure. Her daughters are still waiting for daddy to come home to dinner. Gabriela sets up the table every night and saves a spot for her dad. Jenifer has lost her appetite.
Silvia fears she won’t be able to make enough money to keep her home and provide for her daughters. She is going to night school to improve her English, and is learning how the housekeeping business works through a friend. But there were bills to pay and Christmas presents to buy, and depression has taken a toll on her strength.
“Every day, I thank God for giving me the strength to see my daughters grow up,” Silvia said. “Even though their father is not here, I am here.”

The Herreras’ wishes

What she asked for: Money to pay funeral bills and the mortgage, and to give Gabriela a traditional quinceanera, a 15th-birthday party, which Dad had promised. Silvia wanted to give her girls a bedroom set, a trip to Disney, iPods, bicycles and a goldfish.

What she received: So far, enough cash to pay six months of her mortgage, plus funeral expenses. Toys came from Farmworker Coordinating Council toy drives.

What she said: “She is very appreciative of all the support, and it has helped her to get past the devastation of losing her husband,” said Manuel Allende, executive director.

Nominated by: Farmworker Coordinating Council
Address: 1010 Tenth Ave. North Suite #1, Lake Worth, FL 33460
Phone: (561) 533-7227
Its mission: To promote self-sufficiency and improve the quality of life to immigrant and seasonal farm workers.