Neediest Cases Campaign - Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of ...

Catholic Charities Partners with
Neediest Cases Campaign: 2012-2013
Providing Help and Creating Hope
For New Yorkers in Need
INSIDE
Profiles of
New Yorkers in Need
Helped by
Catholic Charities

Table of Contents
A Message from Monsignor Kevin Sullivan 2
Lives Rebuilt: Thanks to Catholic Charities and
The New York Times Neediest Campaign
Fund Let Voices Be Heard, and for One Boy That Was Enough 3
Pressing On for the Children 4
On the Front Line 4
VIDEOS: Lives Rebuilt 4
Protecting and Nurturing Children and Youth
Bad Neighborhood, Good Children and a Creative Mother 7
EDITORIAL: Books for College 8
Told to Leave Her Home, a Teenage Mother Finds Help
and Seeks Reconciliation 9
Feeding the Hungry and Sheltering the Homeless
Ignoring Limitations and Aiming to Inspire 11
Working, Studying and Seeking a Home 12
An Eviction, Followed by a Parade of Homeless Shelters 13
Strengthening Families and Resolving Crises
Mother’s Newfound Financial Security Benefits Son 15
After a Partner’s Death, Still Focused on the Children 16
After Husband’s Sudden Death,
Widow Seeks New Home and Job 17
Supporting the Physically and Emotionally Challenged
Despite Hard Times, Veteran Still Lives Independently 19
After Stroke, Living in a Home Filled
With Bickering, and Love 20
Left Blind After a Mugging,
a Son Is Still Driven to Support His Family 21
Welcoming and Integrating Immigrants and Refugees
Borrowed Hearing Aid Opens New World to Teenager 23
Venezuelan Finds Asylum, and a Career, in New York 24
A Survivor of Torture Finds a Safe Haven in New York 25
Featured Agency Directory 26
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Catholic Charities Vision
Catholic Charities helps solve the problems of New Yorkers in need—non-Catholics and
Catholics alike. The neglected child, the homeless family and the hungry senior are among
those for whom we provide help and create hope. We rebuild lives and touch almost every
human need promptly, locally, day in and day out, always with compassion and dignity.
We help our neighbors as you would like to be helped if your family were in need.

A Message from
Monsignor Kevin Sullivan
Too many New Yorkers — children, families and individuals —
have suffered for far too long. Families double up.
Grandparents raising grandchildren run out of food before
the end of the month. Shelters are packed. People call our
offices daily worried about next month’s rent. Jobs remain
scarce, particularly for older workers and young people
entering the workforce. Disasters, such as Superstorm Sandy
last year, tear lives apart.
Our opportunity to partner with The New York Times Foundation provides an occasion to
spotlight the strength and dignity of these struggling New Yorkers. It also provides a forum
for readers to join us in bringing vital help and hope to those in need.
Day in and day out our federation of 90 agencies provides crucial assistance for thousands
of New Yorkers, non-Catholics and Catholics alike.
I invite you to read the profiles of 18 individuals and families. They offer a glimpse of the intense
struggles faced by so many New Yorkers. And they demonstrate the support Catholic Charities
provides, always with compassion and always with dignity.
Sincerely,
Monsignor Kevin Sullivan
Executive Director
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York
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Lives Rebuilt:
Thanks to Catholic Charities and The
For nearly 100 years, Catholic Charities has partnered with The New York Times, sharing profiles of some of those whose
lives have been changed by help and hope that Catholic Charities provides.
Their stories have often spurred readers to assist in nearly miraculous ways. A once blind and homeless man — Carlos
Castro — can now see, supports himself and lives in his own apartment. A once deaf man — Vladimir Gongora — can now
hear. And a disabled mother, Marjorie Suarez, now volunteers to help others in need.
Here are a few of their stories along with an interview with Stephanie Harrill, one of Catholic Charities’social workers
who drew on Catholic Charities’ wealth of services to help transform lives.
New York Times METRO Saturday, February 9, 2013
Fund Let Voices Be Heard,
and for One Boy That Was Enough
By JOHN OTIS
Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times
Vladimir Gongora, the subject of an
article that detailed his inability to afford
a hearing aid, getting the issue resolved
in Queens.
For more than 100 years, the stories of
struggle that make up The NewYork Times
Neediest Cases Fund’s annual campaign
have inspired readers to help New Yorkers
in dire financial need.
The experience of Carlos Castro
prompted a response. Blinded after a
stabbing a decade ago, Mr. Castro, 26, has
been trying to support himself and his
mother with work as a translator. Until
recently, they had been living in the city’s
shelter system.
A midtown Manhattan business owner
sent Mr. Castro $2,500 in December to help
him pay rent; he also received furniture,
bed linens and a coat.
“I didn’t expect to get helped like that,”
Mr. Castro said. “I didn’t think someone
would go into their pocket for me.”
And after The Times published an
article about Vladimir Gongora, a recent
immigrant from El Salvador who is deaf but
cannot afford hearing aids, the newspaper
and his school received dozens of calls and
e-mails from readers who wanted to
donate hearing devices to him.
“I am a deaf 16-year-old high school
student living in New Rochelle, N.Y.,”
wrote Gabriel Brainson, a reader with an
extra hearing aid. “I showed my parents
the article, and asked them if we could
give my hearing aid to Vladimir and his
family.” He continued, “How can we make
this happen?”
The onslaught of support led the
Lexington Hearing and Speech Center, a
sister agency of Vladimir’s school, to create
a fund for young people who need hearing
aids but cannot afford them. The Hearing
Aids of My Own Fund quickly collected
enough money to buy new devices for
Vladimir. On Thursday, Vladimir, now 18,
was fitted for his hearing aids. “It’s your
responsibility to take care of these,” said
Joanne Tzortzatos, the audiologist who
fitted him.
Without the machines, Vladimir hears
nothing. But with them, a test showed
he can perceive sounds at the level of a
typical conversation.
“Initially it will be a lump of loud
sounds all together,” said Adele Agin,
executive director of the center. But as
he wears them longer, “he’ll be able to
discriminate more” among car honks, door
knocks and voices. “No one knows what
his potential will be,” she said.
After Vladimir squeezed the rubbery,
transparent devices into his ears, his father,
Jose Gongora, called him from across the
small room: “Vladi!” Vladimir whipped
his head around.
“It’s a blessing from God,” Mr. Gongora
said.
3 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times Neediest Campaign
New York Times METRO Saturday, January 12, 2013
Pressing On for the Children
By TAMARA BEST
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
As part of the 2012-13 Neediest Cases
campaign, The NewYork Times is catching
up on some of the people who were profiled
as part of recent campaigns.
After a minor injury turned into a
devastating disability, Marjorie Suarez has
been unable to work. Her spirit, however,
remains strong.
“Physically I’m not any better,” she says
in her video interview. “Emotionally and
mentally I am because I’ve changed inside.
“I see that there are places out there that
can help you. Everyone at some point in the
day or the week or the month or whatever,
there’s always something small that we
need. Something small like saying good
morning to someone in the elevator — you
can change their whole day.
“If I see someone that needs assistance
with something that I can do for them I
try to do that as much as I can. I can say
I’m more aware of people now than I was
before.”
New York Times METRO Saturday, February 9, 2013
On the Front Line
By TAMARA BEST and JOSH WILLIAMS
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
In this end-of-season interview,
The New York Times spotlights Stephanie
Harrill, social worker at Catholic Charities
Guild for the Blind, whose extraordinary
work has helped transform lives.
“People hear the word charity and they
think of a hand out,” she says in her online
video interview with The NewYork Times.
“Our services are a hand up.
“With the downturn of the economy,
there are people turning to social services
that didn’t before. There is an increase in
clients who didn’t want to have to use
services but they’ve gotten to that point
and then we have to go into crisis mode.
“Sometimes people hear the title,
‘social worker,’ and expect that immediate
step because we should know how to do
everything. It’s awesome because we have
the ability to do so many different things
and at the same time challenging because
the expectation is there.”
VIDEOS:
Lives Rebuilt
▲●
Watch and listen to
Marjorie Suarez —
http://www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2013/01/12/
nyregion/neediest-oneyear
later-moms.html
▲●
Listen to Stephanie Harrill —
http://www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2013/02/09/
nyregion/neediest-cases-onthe-front-line.html#/?slide=3
Watch and listen to
Vladimir Gongora —
http://www.nytimes.com/video/
▲● 2013/01/10/nyregion/
100000001996933/a-boyssilence-is-broken.html
Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
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Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Protecting and Nurturing
Children and Youth
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
6

New York Times METRO Thursday, January 3, 2013
Bad Neighborhood,
Good Children and a Creative Mother
By JOHN OTIS
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
Yoshita Childress with her children,
Syrene Samuel, 15, and Syrus Samuel, 14,
at their apartment on the Lower East Side.
“I don’t need my son to be a statistic,”
Ms. Childress said.
Gunfire and police sirens punctuate the
soundtrack of the streets outside Yoshita
Childress’s home, an apartment that offers
frequent views of middle-of-the-night
brawls and arrests.
“You can hear the shots,” said Ms.
Childress, 47. “You can look outside the
window and see people running. You see
a flow of people coming in to buy drugs.
It’s unreal.”
Ms. Childress lives in a public-housing
project with her children, Syrene Samuel,
15, and her brother, Syrus,14, on the Lower
East Side, just off Avenue D. It is a part of
NewYork City that Ms. Childress said was
living up to its baleful reputation.
For the moment, moving away from the
block is unrealistic. Ms. Childress has been
out of work since 2009, when she was let go
from a delivery driver’s job at FreshDirect.
Despite her enrollment in the Education
Welfare to Careers Project, attempts to find
a new job have so far proved fruitless,
in part because of a severe injury in 2007.
She broke two leg bones after slipping on
a patch of black ice and was hospitalized
for a month. The resulting damage has
limited the kind of truck driving jobs she
has been able to accept, since she is unable
to perform the heavy lifting often required
in such jobs.
The Department of Social Services pays
the family’s entire $400 subsidized rent,
and they receive assistance for living
expenses and food. The children’s father
contributes about $100 a month in support.
In order to keep Syrene and Syrus safe,
Ms. Childress insists that they stay busy
with after-school activities, or remain largely
confined to the apartment. “I don’t like
them hanging out too much outside here,”
she said. “I don’t need my son to be a
statistic. I don’t need his legs spread up
against the wall. I don’t need these kids to
be involved with drugs. I pretty much want
them coming and going.”
One of the most effective means to that
end is her children’s participation in Catholic
Big Sisters and Big Brothers, an affiliate
of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New
York, one of the organizations supported by
The NewYork Times Neediest Cases Fund.
“It’s better to go with our Big Brother
and Big Sister than sitting inside and doing
nothing, or being out there with those crazy
people,” said Syrene, who has had the
chance to take part in activities like
exploring museums, ice skating and even
attending a cooking class.
Syrus has enjoyed having an older
“sibling” to play basketball and video
games with, and to have an outlet to
discuss any problems that he might be
having back home.
Syrus, who has attention-def icit
hyperactivity disorder, is also fostering a
creative mind. Since he was in fourth
grade, he has been drawing images and
characters inspired by Japanese animé
and manga comics.
“I have a lot of stories and characters in
my head,” he said. “I just have to put them
down” on paper.
His mother has a creative bent, too,
demonstrated through a hobby she picked
up during her hospital stay after she
broke her leg: she is an avid knitter.
Growing up poor on the Lower East Side,
Ms. Childress said, she found very few
opportunities to take part in any programs
that allowed her to be artistic and explore
her imagination. “I grew up playing in
mud,” she said.
Syrus recently applied to several
top-flight public high schools specializing
in the arts. Syrene is enrolled in collegereadiness
courses, and has ambitions to
become a nurse.
Catholic Charities recently provided the
family with $425 from the Neediest Cases
Fund to buy a computer for the family,
which was vital for completing school
projects and research papers. Success in
the classroom was at stake for all three
of them.
In the summer, Ms. Childress began
studying at Metropolitan College of
New York, aided by state and federal
grants as well as assistance from the
Education Welfare project. She said she
expected to complete her associate’s
degree in human services in the summer,
and a bachelor’s degree next year. Ms.
Childress knows that along with giving
her the chance to secure a better job,
her academic efforts will further inspire
her children.
“It’s great to show my kids that even
though I’m older, learning doesn’t stop,”
she said.
7 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times METRO Friday, November 30, 2012
EDITORIAL:
Books for College
Maria Lema, who this fall became the
first in her family to attend college, always
loved school. “It was my main focus in
life,” she said, “the only thing I’ve been
good at.” At age 6, Ms. Lema and her
younger sister were placed in foster care
with her uncle and his wife because her
mother was using drugs.
Five years later, the girls returned home
to live with their mother, who had stopped
using drugs. But she and Ms. Lema fought
a lot, and school was a refuge. “I would
wake up and look forward to go to school,”
Ms. Lema said. She joined school clubs
and became known as the smart girl.
Conflicts with her mother drove her to
move in with friends in her senior year.
She graduated with a grade-point average
of 90, and with help from her Bronx high
school and St. Raymond Community
Outreach, a Catholic Charities affiliate,
she applied to college.
Buffalo State College gave her the most
money; grants and a $5,000 annual student
loan covered all but $810 of the tuition.
She worked at Burger King last summer to
pay the balance, but she had no money for
books. Catholic Charities Archdiocese of
New York, an organization supported by
The NewYork Times Neediest Cases Fund,
gave her $470 to buy books. This fall,
she began her freshmen year in Buffalo.
“I always dreamed of attending college,”
she said. “It brings me joy that I have
gotten this far.”
Donations to The Neediest Cases
Fund go to seven charities: Brooklyn
Community Services; Catholic Charities
of the Archdiocese of New York; Catholic
Charities, Diocese of Brooklyn and
Queens; the Children’s Aid Society;
the Community Service Society of New
York; the Federation of Protestant Welfare
Agencies; and the UJA-Federation of
Brendan Bannon for The New York Times
Maria Lema is the first member of her
family to attend college.
NewYork. To help, please send a check to:
The NewYork Times Neediest Cases Fund,
4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East,
Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11245.
You may also call (800) 381-0075 and
use a credit card, or you may donate
at:www.nytneediestcases.com.
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
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New York Times METRO Monday, November 12, 2012
Told to Leave Her Home,
a Teenage Mother Finds Help
and Seeks Reconciliation
By JOHN OTIS
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Lataja James with her son, Dillyn Martin,
at the Elinor Martin Residence for Mother
and Child, a shelter that took her in.
Lataja James had never expected the
doctor delivering her blood-test results to
tell her she was nine weeks pregnant.
Her mother’s response to the news was
much less shocking, but packed just as
potent a wallop.
“My mom just walked out of the room,”
Ms. James,18, recalled. “And when we got
home, she told me to find somewhere to
live because I wasn’t going to be living in
her house. She wasn’t going to put up with
the nonsense anymore.”
Ms. James acknowledged that her
mother — who feared that her daughter’s
streak of destructive behavior would result
in pregnancy — had repeatedly warned her
that the consequence would be banishment
from their Bronx apartment.
“I was rebelling a lot, smoking and
drinking, and not going to school,”
Ms. James said, explaining that she began
acting out at 13, shortly after the death of
her father, who was serving life in prison
for murder.
“Despite your dad being bad, you still
have hopes and dreams,” she said of the
man whom she met only once. “You still
want to know your dad.”
Eventually, other dreams and personal
goals won out, inspiring Ms. James to get
her life together. She became involved
with volunteer activities and was selected
for an all-expenses-paid trip to Nicaragua
to help construct a school as part of the
buildOn program. Preparation for that
journey had been the very reason for the
blood test in August 2011.
Denial struck hard, but after the doctor
explained that blood did not lie, Ms. James
learned her mother did not, either; her
threats had not been empty. Ms. James had
to find somewhere else to live within a
matter of weeks.
Angry and dismayed, she took to the
Internet, searching for women’s shelters,
which yielded a result that would change
the course of her life: the Elinor Martin
Residence for Mother and Child in New
Rochelle, N.Y., an affiliate of Catholic
Charities Archdiocese of New York. She
moved there within weeks of the blood
test. The shelter, which opened in 1994,
serves about 24 women and children
a year, providing residents with meals,
day care for their children and counseling.
In February, Ms. James gave birth to a
son, Dillyn Martin, and he has helped
refocus her ambitions even more than
her acceptance to the shelter, where the
stays are not so much time-frame based
as they are goal based. Ms. James said
her goal was to finish high school and go
to college.
“Because I wasn’t taking my education
seriously when I was younger, I have a lot
more catching up to do,” she said.The Elinor
Martin Residence helped her enroll at New
Rochelle High School, and she is on track
to graduate in June. “I want to go to UConn
and study criminal psychology, and Dillyn
is my motivation,” she said.
Ms. James works 10 hours a week at
Robeks, a smoothie bar, where she was
recently promoted to shift leader, and
earns about $260 a month. Because she
has chosen to work, she does not receive a
$315 monthly housing allowance given to
many other shelter residents by the State
Department of Social Services. As a result,
Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New
York, one of the agencies supported by
The NewYork Times Neediest Cases Fund,
drew $440 from the fund, putting $315
toward her July rent at the shelter and
the remainder toward her August rent.
Ms. James said she recently broke off her
relationship with Dillyn’s father, but still has
a wealth of support. “I really am grateful”
for the Elinor Martin Residence, she said.
“I’m surrounded by so many moms, and
it’s like a family.”
As for her own family, Ms. James
said she was working on mending her
relationship with her mother, with the
help of counseling offered at the residence.
She said her mother was at the hospital
when Dillyn was born and loves her
grandson dearly.
Ms. James also believes that her
experiences in the past year have proved to
be more didactic than destructive to her
future, and that they have imparted lessons
that can improve the lives of not only her
son, but also her siblings, who are younger.
“My brother and sister are part of my
inspiration, too,” Ms. James said. “No one
in my family graduated college or even
graduated high school. Even though my
choices weren’t wise, I feel like they can
do so much better than me. I want them to
be better than me.”
9 Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Feeding the Hungry and
Sheltering the Homeless
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New York Times METRO Sunday, January 6, 2013
Ignoring Limitations
and Aiming to Inspire
By JOHN OTIS
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Otis Hampton, who was born with cerebral
palsy, currently lives in a homeless
shelter in Harlem.
Otis Hampton once walked 40 blocks
in Manhattan, and swelled with pride when
he reached his destination.
His journey had been difficult — for
him, walking is laborious and painful —
and he was unable to match the brisk pace
of the people alongside him, most of
whom could take for granted their ease of
mobility. Mr. Hampton, who was born with
cerebral palsy, has never had that luxury.
When he exerts himself to that degree,
it is always with a purpose. Not only does
Mr. Hampton, 22, refuse to accept limitations,
but he also strives to inspire others.
“I feel like when I take walks, or when
I’m walking in general, there may be a kid
I know with cerebral palsy who’s been
wanting to take a step without falling that
finally gets up out of his or her wheelchair
and takes those steps for the first time,”
he said.
Growing up, Mr. Hampton was often
teased by classmates and was stigmatized
both for his disability and for the time he
spent in the foster care system. He was
adopted at age 8, but his adoptive father
died after a stroke two years later.
Last February, Mr. Hampton was forced
to confront a new challenge: homelessness.
“I came home and saw suitcases out in
front of the house,” he said. “I originally
thought it was someone going on vacation.”
Instead, it was Mr. Hampton who was
leaving. His adoptive mother had decided
to ask him to leave after the most recent of
what Mr. Hampton said were increasingly
frequent disputes. He ended up in the shelter
system and dropped out of Kingsborough
Community College, where he had been
enrolled. Since April, he has been living at
Create, a shelter in Harlem.
His income consists of less than $300 a
month in public assistance and food stamps.
He also receives Medicaid and earns a $50
stipend whenever he writes an essay for
Represent magazine, a publication aimed
at children in foster care.
Create is in the process of helping
Mr. Hampton find work as well as return
to college. To help him with bills, Catholic
Charities Archdiocese of NewYork, one of
the agencies supported by The New York
Times Neediest Cases Fund, drew $286
from the fund so that he could cover
months of cellphone charges and buy
MetroCards.
For as long as he can remember,
Mr. Hampton said, he has simply wanted
to become self-reliant.
“Throughout my life, I’ve wanted to do
things that other people could do,” he said.
“Regular things like being able to take
public transportation, getting a girlfriend,
and being able to maintain a job.”
He said the negativity of being told that
he could not do some things “drove me to
try and do whatever I felt like I could do.”
His aspiration to one day become
a professional wrestler dominated his
childhood thoughts. So did constant
discouragement. Mr. Hampton said he was
often told that because of his cerebral
palsy, his ambitions were mere pipe dreams.
That changed when he saw the
professional wrestler Zach Gowen —
whose left leg was amputated when he was
a child — hold his own in the ring.
Mr. Hampton learned then that words
mean nothing when measured against heart.
“I saw him wrestle and was like, ‘If he can
do this, I can too,’ ” said Mr. Hampton,
adding that he uses that idea to encourage
others with cerebral palsy.
“If I meet somebody with the same
condition who says they’re not able to do
this, they’re not able to do that, I tell them
that they can if they just give it a try.”
That positive advocacy extends to other
parts of his life. Mr. Hampton is active in
several programs run by a foster care
agency, including one called the Alumni
Group, whose participants mostly discuss
ways to improve the foster care system. He
is also part of a drama therapy group and
serves as a mentor in a program called
AdoptMent.
Mr. Hampton said his relationship with
his mother had improved since he left her
home. He said he was waiting to learn if
he could re-enroll in college, and he has
recently begun applying for jobs at some
large retail stores.
“I don’t want to tell people, ‘Oh, that’s
just the way it goes, that you can’t do this or
you can’t do that,’ ” he said. “I want to give
people the idea that they can do this.”
11 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times METRO Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Working, Studying
and Seeking a Home
By JOHN OTIS
If you called Latoya Ford, 23, an old
soul, she would take it as a compliment,
even if the variety of toys that she owns
might suggest a younger spirit.
When she was 7, Ms. Ford and her
younger brother, Brian, were adopted after
years in foster care. Their adoptive mother,
Dorothy Ford, was in her late 60s, and with
her years came much wisdom.
“I learned a lot of common sense from
her,” Ms. Ford said. “With my peers and
people my age, I’ll tell them they aren’t
thinking with common sense, and they’d
say I was speaking like their grandmother
would speak. But that’s how I was brought
up. You got to think about certain things,
think about how you approach people.”
Ms. Ford understands responsibility as
well as she understands how to approach
others. She has spent the last four years in
homeless shelters, but works 33 to 44 hours
a week as a certified nursing assistant at
Beth Israel Medical Center, and earlier this
year held down a second job at T. J. Maxx
as a sales associate.
Yet Ms. Ford still manages to inject
some fun into her life at the shelter. Boxes
of K’nex roller coasters, Lego sets and
Nerf guns accent her shared bedroom,
all cures for boredom. Ms. Ford also said
she tried to make it to a roller-skating rink
in New Jersey at least once a week.
That fusion of sensibilities — selfdiscipline
balanced with playfulness —
has helped Ms. Ford navigate a life that has
dealt her a fair share of setbacks.
In 2002, Ms. Ford’s adoptive mother
died. She and Brian were then placed in
the care of their adult adoptive sister,
Marzella Riley.
“Nobody else stepped up, so she stepped
up,” Ms. Ford said. “I guess she felt like
she had an obligation to take us.”
The Ford siblings moved from Florence,
S.C., where they had been living since
their adoption, back to their hometown,
New York City, to be with Ms. Riley in the
Bronx. Ms. Ford was just 13.
“Growing up, I always wanted her to
come visit,” Ms. Ford said of her sister.
“I always thought my mom was so boring.
She would come bake cookies with me,
show me how to do certain stuff. But when
we came to live with her, it was another
story. It was arguing all the time. It was
‘You’re not my mother.’ ”Around this time,
doctors told Ms. Ford, who had already
been coping with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, that she had anxiety and
depression.
At 16, Ms. Ford was enrolled in classes
at the South Bronx Job Corps, while her
brother was sent to Buxton School,
a preparatory school in Williamstown,
Mass. She earned her high school diploma
at Job Corps along with a certif ied
accounting certificate.
After she graduated in 2008, Ms. Ford
said, Ms. Riley told her that she had to
find her own place to live. With nowhere
to go, she turned to Green Chimneys,
a residential program for children in
Putnam County, N.Y. A year and a half later,
Green Chimneys placed her in a room at
Covenant House in Manhattan, a shelter
for teenagers and young adults and an
affiliate of Catholic Charities Archdiocese
of New York, one of the organizations
supported by The NewYork Times Neediest
Cases Fund.
Brian was accepted to Syracuse
University after graduating from high
school, and is pursuing a business degree
there. The two are in frequent contact.
Once Ms. Ford entered Covenant House,
she conducted a serious evaluation of her
ambitions and decided she wanted to
become an emergency medical technician.
She soon received the credentials to
become a certified nursing assistant.
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Latoya Ford, who is studying phlebotomy
and hopes to become an emergency
medical technician, will lose her room at
Covenant House, a shelter for homeless
young people, early next year.
To support Ms. Ford’s future financial
independence, Covenant House is paying
for her to take phlebotomy classes at
the Manhattan Institute. Catholic Charities
secured a grant of $385 from the Neediest
Cases Fund for a laptop to help with
her studies.
Covenant House is also helping Ms. Ford
find permanent housing — with a two-year
time limit, she can stay there only until
the end of January. She is searching for
housing, and to that end, Covenant House
puts $80 of her earnings each week into a
savings account; the money will be
returned to her to put toward an apartment.
Ms. Ford’s empathy for older people,
and those in need, it seems, will quite likely
hold her in good stead in a nursing career.
“How would you feel if you were sitting
up in a hospital bed and you didn’t have
anybody to come see you or visit you or
talk to you or have a conversation?” she
said. “That’s why old people don’t talk to
anybody, because nobody talks to them.
I’m really good with old people. It was
always so much easier to talk to the older
generation.”
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
12

New York Times METRO Wednesday, November 28, 2012
An Eviction, Followed by
a Parade of Homeless Shelters
By JOHN OTIS
Andrea Mohin/The New York Times
Renee Jackson and her daughter, Aquiya,
bounced from one homeless shelter to
another after losing their apartment in
a lease dispute. Aquiya, a high school
senior, hopes to go to college.
If only he knew.
That is what Renee Jackson was thinking
one day this past April as she rode to work
on the F train. A man and his young son
boarded the subway car asking for money.
He was homeless, he said, and his child
was diabetic.
Unknown to the stranger, Ms. Jackson
and her daughter shared a nearly identical
plight, so she was not in a position to give
him any change.
“I’m always used to helping people out,”
Ms. Jackson, 36, said. “To go from helping
my sister or my friends or whoever, to go
to this, it’s hard.”
Since January, Ms. Jackson and her
daughter, Aquiya, 18, have been living in
homeless shelters, a total of four of them
to date. For someone who had lived at
one address her entire life, the last year
of transience has proved extremely
demoralizing.
“I’m a very strong person, and I try not
to break down in front of my daughter,”
she said. “There are days when I’m off
work and I’m at the shelter and I just sit
and cry, because I don’t see it coming to
an end anytime soon.”
Ms. Jackson grew up in a NewYork City
Housing Authority apartment in Harlem.
She and her older sister were raised, and
later adopted by, their grandmother after,
she said, her mother and aunt were
murdered by her mother’s boyfriend.
Ms. Jackson was just a year old.
In 2001, Ms. Jackson took steps to
move, and her name was taken off the
apartment’s lease. Her plans to secure a
new home fell through, she said, and she
stayed in the building.
After Ms. Jackson’s grandmother died
in late 2009, the Housing Authority
determined that she did not have a right to
remain in the apartment at a subsidized
monthly rent of $219. She, her husband of
just one year, Jamel Goodridge, and Aquiya
were evicted in January, after a three-year
court battle.
“It’s terrible,” Ms. Jackson said. “I want
to do whatever I can do to get out of this
situation. I want to say this was just a
memory, that we have our own place now.”
Ms. Jackson works 30 hours a week,
taking additional shifts whenever they are
available, as a clothing sales adviser at an
H&M store, earning $1,200 to $1,300 a
month. She also receives $49 a month in
food stamps, but takes no other form of
public assistance. From those earnings,
she must cover essential expenses: food,
a monthly MetroCard, cellphone charges
and rent for the storage unit that holds her
family’s belongings.
Since April, Ms. Jackson has managed
to save just $800, a meager amount that
illustrates the futility of her efforts.
“I’m at a point where I don’t even walk
around with cash because what little
money I have is in my account for when I
have to pay bills,” she said.
When Ms. Jackson and Aquiya entered
the shelter system, Ms. Jackson and
Mr. Goodridge had an argument that
ended, she said, with him pouring water
onto their television set. Staff members at
the shelter labeled the argument an episode
of domestic violence, and Mr. Goodridge
was forced to move into a shelter for
single men.
They remain separated but are in contact,
as Mr. Goodridge copes with his own
problems: he was injured at his part-time
job in June and now receives workers’
compensation, but has not been able to help
his wife and stepdaughter financially.
In October, Ms. Jackson and her daughter
moved to a new shelter in Manhattan that
does not permit residents to cook, making
it difficult for Aquiya, who learned she has
Type 2 diabetes in 2009, to stick to a healthy
diet. Ms. Jackson said that they sometimes
stayed with relatives on weekends and
prepared more nutritious meals, but that
most of the time they ate out, which ran
counter to both wellness and budget.
Despite all the family has been through,
Aquiya, who is a senior at Bread and Roses
Integrated Arts High School in Harlem,
has ambitions of attending college and
wants to major in culinary arts. To fulfill
that plan, she has been working with a
program called Opportunity NYC, an effort
run by Catholic Charities Archdiocese of
NewYork that assists low-income students
in preparing for college. Catholic Charities,
one of the organizations supported by
The New York Times Neediest Cases
Fund, drew $499 from the fund so that
she could buy a computer, allowing her
to keep up with schoolwork and submit
college applications.
Ms. Jackson is trying to f ind an
apartment of her own, where she and
Aquiya can be secure, and to that end has
applied for another Housing Authority
apartment. But she has so far not even
been able to get on a waiting list.
“There’s no way I would ever, ever,
if I can help it, be in this situation,”
Ms. Jackson said.
13
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Strengthening Families and
Resolving Crises
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
14

New York Times METRO Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Mother’s Newfound
Financial Security Benefits Son
By JOHN OTIS
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Wilmarie Dominguez with her son,
Nicholas Beltran, who has cerebral palsy,
epilepsy and hypertonia, in their Bronx
apartment. Ms. Dominguez received help
after falling behind in her rent.
The only way that Nicholas Beltran has
ever been able to communicate verbally
with his mother, Wilmarie Dominguez,
is with two words. One sound he emits —
an “uh uh” — very clearly means “no,”
while the other, more commonly vocalized
noise expressed as “mahh” — often
requires investigation.
Ms. Dominguez, 32, a single mother,
said that long ago she interpreted that
sound as a cry for attention, but determining
exactly what Nicholas needed from her
was often difficult.
Nicholas,12, was born severely disabled.
Cerebral palsy has restricted him to a
wheelchair. Epilepsy has at times triggered
up to 17 grand mal seizures a day, and
Ms. Dominguez said it had impaired
his vision, leaving him legally blind.
Hypertonia, a condition that limits joint
movement, and developmental delays also
exacerbate his problems.
While he often casts his eyes in the
direction of voices and turns his head to
the kitchen once he smells his dinner,
Ms. Dominguez said that the exact degree
of her son’s cognitive faculties is often
ambiguous.
“I didn’t know how to prepare myself,”
she said, recalling the moment when
doctors told her that her son would be born
with problems.
“I spent two whole years crying myself
to sleep,” she recalled, “and then I told
myself: ‘Why am I crying? There’s nothing
I can do about it. All I can do about it is
deal with it. I just did the best I can, giving
him loving, tender care.”
That care has been more or less around
the clock. Nicholas has to be bathed, his
food has to be puréed and his clothing has
to be changed along with his diapers.
When Nicholas is not at the Westchester
School for Special Children, where he has
been enrolled for the past few years,
mother and son are usually in their Bronx
apartment, with soap operas and cartoons
blaring on the television.
Ms. Dominguez, who once received
frequent help from home attendants, is now
trying to hire a home health aide, someone
who, officials say, would be more appropriate
in her situation.
She admits that relatives are too leery
of Nicholas’s condition for her to rely on
them for assistance.
His father has almost no involvement
with him, Ms. Dominguez said.
“Sometimes I overwork myself,” she
said. “I wish I was three people. I’m so
busy being supermom that I forget myself
sometimes.”
Taking her son to myriad doctors’
appointments made it hard for Ms.
Dominguez to hold down a job. She
recently completed training to become
a day care worker and said that she was
waiting to hear about a job at a nearby day
care center. “I care for little kids like they
were my own,” she said.
The family’s income consists of just
over $1,000 a month from a combination
of Social Security disability payments,
public assistance and food stamps.
Mother and son had been a part of the
Children’s Advantage and Fixed Income
Advantage program, which paid their rent
of $1,070, until the city cut financing
for the program; the subsidy stopped in
August 2011.
After that, Ms. Dominguez wound up
$7,485 in arrears on her rent. She sought the
services of Catholic Charities Archdiocese
of New York, one of the organizations
supported by The NewYork Times Neediest
Cases Fund, to help clear the debt. Grants
from the Catholic Charities HomeBase
program and the city’s Family Eviction
Prevention Supplement program cleared
up the arrears. A grant of $313 from
the Neediest Cases Fund helped pay
Ms. Dominguez’s portion of her November
rent and overdue Consolidated Edison bills.
With Catholic Charities assisting her,
Ms. Dominguez’s landlord agreed to
reduce the rent to $900 a month, with the
Family Eviction Prevention Supplement
program paying $650 of that and Ms.
Dominguez contributing $250.
Righting her f inances has given
Ms. Dominguez a great deal of peace,
which she said was imperative to her son’s
well-being.
“If he senses that I’m scared, he’ll get
worried too,” she said. “If he gets too
excited, it gives him a seizure. So I try to
keep him nice and calm and tell him,
‘Nicholas, calm down, because you know
what you’re going to do to yourself.’ ”
And in his way, Nicholas has the ability
to keep Ms. Dominguez grounded.
“He has given me a lot of strength,” she
said. “Before he was born, I was totally
clueless. I really didn’t care about
anything. When it came to thinking, I didn’t
want to break my head on anything. I now
think about everything he needs, all the
places I need to take him, the doctors he
needs to see,” she said.
“There’s something about having him
that has woken me up.”
Even with her newfound clarity, Ms.
Dominguez continually struggles to
understand her son’s needs. But she has
never once struggled to love him.
In her world, “There’s no me,” she said.
“There’s just him.”
15 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times METRO Wednesday, December 12, 2012
After a Partner’s Death,
Still Focused on the Children
By JOHN OTIS
Hours after learning of the death of
her children’s father, Simone McCray said,
she called his cellphone, thinking he might
answer.
The news that the father, Ronmacrae
Williams, had been killed by a gunshot to
the back of the head came in December
2009, in a frantic late-night phone call
from his mother, a woman whose tendency
to overreact allowed Ms. McCray to cling to
the belief that it somehow would not be true.
Ms. McCray’s denial faltered when her
own calls connected her to Mr. Williams’s
voice mail.
Once reality sank in, the hard part came.
Mr. Williams had left behind a son, Micah,
then just 3 months old, and a daughter,
Leyoura, who was 4 and who would need
to be told of her father’s death.
“Word had gotten back to our pastor,”
Ms. McCray recalled. “He asked if I wanted
him to be there when I told her. I said yes.
So he came when she got out of school and
he more or less told her. I could not. ...”
Father and daughter shared a strong bond,
reflected by their tradition of spending
Father’s Day together by themselves. Their
last such outing together took them to
Playland, the amusement park in Rye, N.Y.,
which was where Mr. Williams and
Ms. McCray first met, as high school
students working summer jobs.
“She was his heart,” Ms. McCray said.
“That was his pride and joy. He thought,
‘My child’s going to have the best.’ If he
bought something new, she got something
new. They were like twins.”
Mr. Williams’s killing remains unsolved,
but Ms. McCray said she had made her
peace with what happened.
“It’s not something I wanted to think
about, because I didn’t want to find myself
in that place of falling apart over this,” she
said. “I just wanted to be able to stay sane
for my children.”
Although Mr. Williams and Ms. McCray
had not married, she said that they had a
relationship in which their children were
the priority, and that he had been very
present as a father.
Even with Mr. Williams gone, Ms.
McCray, 27, does not raise her children
alone. Mr. Williams’s parents provide
support, as do the children’s godparents.
The most significant help comes from
Ms. McCray’s mother, who a few years ago
invited her daughter and grandchildren to
share the Bronx apartment that she had
lived in for more than three decades.
Ms. McCray and her children have laid
claim to the apartment’s lone bedroom,
while her mother sleeps in the entryway,
on a futon. Ms. McCray supports the
family with her Social Security survivor
benefits, of about $1,760 a month, and
contributes $400 a month to rent at her
mother’s apartment.
She was doing her best, she said, to
fulf ill Mr. Williams’s hopes for the
children, his “wishes to raise them well,
and give them what they need.”
Both children are thriving. Micah, now
3, is driven by curiosity, often enraptured
by electronics. Leyoura, 7, is listed on her
school’s honor roll.
In September, Ms. McCray found her
way to the Grace Institute, an agency
aff iliated with Catholic Charities
Archdiocese of New York, one of the
agencies supported by The New York
Angel Franco/The New York Times
Times Neediest Cases Fund. The institute
provides free classes in business skills to
women in need. Ms. McCray’s six-month
program runs until March 2013, but she
has already taken a job she was offered,
with Montefiore Medical Center in the
Bronx. After graduating from Grace,
Ms. McCray plans to take one more
class at Westchester Community College,
where she has been a student, to obtain a
certificate in medical billing.
To attend the classes at Grace, Ms.
McCray had to pay $600 a month for a
baby sitter, but she was unable to pay for a
two-week period after buying clothes and
school supplies for Leyoura. Catholic
Charities drew $300 from the Neediest Cases
Fund to cover the cost of the child care.
In addition to all the emotional support
she receives, Ms. McCray said, her spirits
are lifted by a favorite saying: “God gives his
hardest battles to his toughest soldiers.” It
offers her perspective and helps to keep
anxiety at bay, which is even more important
to her now than it was three years ago.
“I have learned it’s not worth it to panic,”
she said. “If I’m stressing myself, it’s going
to kill my health, and I want to be on this
earth as long as I can for my kids.”
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
16

New York Times METRO Saturday, November 24, 2012
After Husband’s Sudden Death,
Widow Seeks New Home and Job
By THOMAS GAFFNEY
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
Beaulah Smith, who cared for her
dying husband while battling ovarian
cancer, depleted her savings trying
to pay expenses.
On Jan. 13, Beaulah Smith was seated
beside her husband, Isaac, as he lay in a
hospital bed listening to a team of doctors
explain the grim state of his health. Ms.
Smith, 63, knew that her husband was
weak after having several strokes, and she
suspected that the pain he was experiencing
might be the result of an ulcer. But as she
sat beside her husband of 40 years, she
was totally unprepared for the words she
would hear.
Terminal colon cancer. Inoperable.
Six months.
The family was thunderstruck. This
could not be right. The couple’s daughter
Marisella Wilson, 41, who was in the room,
ran out of the hospital in tears.
As it turned out, the doctors were wrong
about the six-month life expectancy.
Isaac Smith would die three weeks later,
on Feb. 2.
“Do you see how that blows a person
away?” Ms. Smith said in an interview,
while speaking about the short time she had
to say goodbye. She could not understand
how doctors had missed such a substantial
health problem, particularly since her
husband was either in a hospital or under
nursing care for much of the previous year.
She was left wondering how the situation
might have turned out differently if they
had found his cancer earlier, while it was
still treatable. Perhaps that is why the
biggest source of pain that Ms. Smith has
had to face in recent months has been the
discovery of a single piece of paper she
found in her home while preparing to move.
It was a biopsy result that said her husband
had a diagnosis of invasive adenocarcinoma,
a type of cancer. The report was dated
Oct. 27, 2006. Although the report indicated
that Mr. Smith had been informed of the
diagnosis, Ms. Smith said she had no idea.
The emotional fallout from that
discovery has been a significant setback
for Ms. Smith. “I’m going forward and
trying to make the best, but I feel spiritually
broken,” she said.
In June 2010, her husband had a series
of strokes. The episodes transformed the
once-independent man, who used to work
as a chauffeur, into a frail person who was
plagued by confusion and was in need of
constant help.
Mr. Smith was transferred to a nursing
home for recovery and therapy, and
eventually he returned home to the brick
split-level house on Staten Island where he
and Ms. Smith had lived since 1999.
Speaking in her tidy living room
decorated with framed family pictures,
Ms. Smith recounted the challenge of
dealing with the sudden changes in her
husband’s personality, especially the mood
swings that became violent at times. “He
became unglued,” she said. “I had to spend
a lot of time rendering care to him.”
Then in December 2010, Ms. Smith
began experiencing health problems of
her own: she was struck with stomach
pains so severe that she was hospitalized for
what doctors diagnosed as diverticulitis.
She had surgery later that month and
received alarming news.
The surgeon discovered that Ms. Smith
had ovarian cancer, which had advanced to
Stage 3. “All of a sudden, in a few days,
your life gets flipped around,” she said.
She began chemotherapy in April 2011,
balancing the difficult treatment with her
demanding caretaking responsibilities
at home. She was still undergoing
chemotherapy at the time of her husband’s
funeral.
Throughout this ordeal, Ms. Smith’s
finances tightened.
Although she used to work as an HIV
counselor at the Special Funds Conservation
Committee in New York, she had lost that
job and relied on a pension of $312 a month
and monthly Social Security disability
payments of $1,771.
Faced with her husband’s home-care
expenses and funeral costs, Ms. Smith fell
two and a half months behind on her rent
and was given an eviction notice. Not
knowing what else to do, she turned to
Catholic Charities Archdiocese NewYork,
one of the agencies supported by The New
York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
In July, Catholic Charities provided Ms.
Smith with $705 from the fund to help her
avoid eviction and to pay off what she
owed on her rent, which is $1,805 a month.
Her caseworkers also sought an interestfree
loan for her from the Bridge Fund,
a nonprof it organization aimed at
preventing homelessness, which provided
her with money while she settled her affairs
and prepared to move to more affordable
housing. She intends to move at the
beginning of next year, and is looking for
a new job to help get her life back on track.
Ms. Smith’s health has improved, and
she makes regular visits to her doctor at
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
But she is still troubled, wondering what
would have happened if her husband had
acted on his sickness when his illness was
first discovered.
“It is a miserable feeling,” she said.
“I’m wrestling with it. And I can’t do a
thing about it.”
17
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Supporting the Physically and
Emotionally Challenged
Copyright ©2012 ©2011 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
18

New York Times METRO Monday, January 21, 2013
Despite Hard Times,
Veteran Still Lives Independently
By KASSIE BRACKEN
Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times
Charles Daubek Jr., 94, in a nursing
home in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., where he was
sent for short-term rehabilitation after
a hospital stay.
He was on a 10-day furlough when he
first saw the house: a boxy two-story home
on Heath Place in woodsy Hastings-on-
Hudson, Westchester County. He had been
stationed in England when his parents,
Charles and Elizabeth Daubek, wrote to say
they had saved, scrimped and borrowed to
buy it — for $5,000. Now, Pvt. Charles
Daubek Jr. stood on the front porch, about
to surprise his mother.
Nearly seven decades later, Mr. Daubek,
94, remembers the “wonderful feeling” of
that day in1944. Charlie had been Elizabeth’s
only child; when he had left for basic
training, his distraught mother could not
even bear to take him to the train station.
And then there he was, at the front door of
her new home. Their new home.
Life was gentler then. “People were more
courteous,” Mr. Daubek said. Niceness is
of the utmost importance to him; he laments
the time when people did not curse over
parking spaces.
Mr. Daubek has lived in that house
since returning from the war in 1946. The
fraying roof and rusting mailbox tell one
story: at his age, he has neither the money
nor the physical stamina to make repairs.
But within the walls live a lifetime of
memories — his memories — and so he
hopes to spend the rest of his life there
independently. He is helped by a small
army of support coordinated by Dominican
Sisters Family Health Service. An aide,
Linnette Miller (“You couldn’t ask for a
nicer lady,” Mr. Daubek said), helps with
everyday tasks, a nurse comes weekly to
monitor his health and Meals on Wheels
delivers daily lunches.And after Mr. Daubek
lost power during Hurricane Sandy, brothers
from his denomination, the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, came over to assist.
John McCarron, a retired police officer
who is now a social worker with Dominican
Sisters, started working with Mr. Daubek
about eight years ago. “Having been 20 to
25 years his junior, I found he was quicker
on the draw than I was,” Mr. McCarron
said, “so I was hoping that maybe I could
learn something from him that would
teach me how to get to his age with the
capacity he has.”
Mr. Daubek credits his graceful aging
with “good living”: no heavy drinking or
smoking. “I tried smoking once, and I
coughed my head off,” he said. “What’s the
sense of coughing your head off when you
could have a nice steak dinner?”
He is deeply appreciative of his
support network. He never married or had
children — any extended family “dwindled
away.” He came close once, during the war.
A very nice gal named Simone. She lived
in one of the small houses across from the
Belgian school where he had been billeted.
“When you’re a young guy, nah, you
want to fool around, you want to have fun,
but then you regret that,” Mr. Daubek said.
“I’d love to have a family; that was my
main goal, to have a family, a nice wife.”
He still has the letters he and Simone
wrote to each other after his return to the
States. But it was not to be.
Instead he returned to the house on Heath
Place and worked making hearing aids for
a local manufacturer, then took care of his
parents after his retirement at 62. When
undetected diabetes caused his father’s leg
to turn black, Mr. Daubek would struggle to
help him up the12 or so steps to the bedroom
and bathroom. Charles Sr. eventually
died, as did Elizabeth, at age 95 while in
midconversation with her son.
He continued to live there alone,
spending two or three hours a day taping
big-band shows on the radio (“you don’t
hear that on the radio anymore — now it’s
all bebop”), reading and taking walks in
the neighborhood. He had thought that his
savings and Social Security would be
enough to carry him, but the last decade
has been tough going.
The reverse mortgage he took out in
2000 augments the $860 in Social Security
and $130 in food stamps he receives
monthly. Still, with his annual income less
than $18,000 and with his savings gone, his
expenses began to eclipse his resources.
“When you have money, you can buy oil
and pay your taxes,” Mr. Daubek said. “It’s
a terrible thing when you got to skimp and
you don’t know if you can make it or not.”
Last fall, he fell behind on his heating
oil bill. So Dominican Sisters, an affiliate
of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New
York, called upon the organization for help.
Catholic Charities, one of the agencies
supported by The NewYork Times Neediest
Cases Fund, drew $680 from the fund to
help pay the bill. Afterward, his fellow
Jehovah’s Witnesses helped Mr. Daubek to
successfully petition the bank for an
increase in the mortgage payout, as well as
to secure money from a pension fund for
aging veterans.
But last month Mr. Daubek grew dizzy
from low blood sugar and had difficulty
climbing the stairs. He was admitted to a
hospital, and then to Cabrini Eldercare in
Dobbs Ferry for short-term rehabilitation.
“This is something else; even Donald
Trump doesn’t have this,” Mr. McCarron
said as he wheeled Mr. Daubek to Cabrini’s
large corner window. Yes, Mr. Daubek
appreciates the unobstructed views of the
Hudson. And all of the staff members are
nice. He can’t complain. But it’s not home.
Soon, he hopes to be back at Heath Place,
in his chair, the sound of the traffic on the
adjacent Saw Mill River Road an undertone
to Benny Goodman’s swinging clarinet.
19 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times METRO Friday, December 7, 2012
After Stroke, Living in a Home Filled
With Bickering, and Love
By JOHN OTIS
A conversation between two roommates,
Marianela Toro and Ana Ventura, on a
recent afternoon consisted of disparaging
comments soaked in sarcasm and exasperated
sighs that were soon chased with
laughter. There was even a weapon
brandished: Ms. Ventura, 43, threatened
Ms. Toro, 46, with a pillow.
“Her hobby is screaming,” Ms. Toro said.
“She screams all the time.”
“She’s like a child,” Ms. Ventura shot
back, and Ms. Toro, an admitted instigator,
simply smiled.
Ms. Toro and Ms. Ventura are sisters,
sharing an apartment in the Unionport
neighborhood of the Bronx. Ms. Ventura’s
12-year-old son, Yadriel Bracero, who had
always been close to his aunt, lives with
them. Bickering and pranks are commonplace
in their home.
The sisters, who moved from Puerto
Rico to the Bronx in the 1980s, started
living together in the apartment shortly
after Ms. Toro had a stroke, in June 2010.
Because she had a blood clot in her brain,
doctors had to drill a hole into her skull
and insert three metal plates into her head.
Now most of the left side of Ms. Toro’s
body is permanently paralyzed. She is able
to wiggle her left foot and move her leg
slightly, but she cannot move her left arm.
At the time of her stroke, Ms. Toro had
been living in Woodbridge, Va., working
as a school bus attendant. After her release
from the hospital, Ms. Toro returned, in a
wheelchair, to live in an apartment in the
Bronx.
At first, she and a male friend shared
the apartment. They agreed that he would
pay the rent, and she would pay the
electricity bill; an aide covered by Medicaid
would help with her daily needs. But her
roommate stopped paying rent and moved
out, leaving $5,070 in arrears.
That is when her sister and Yadriel
moved in.
“I had a problem with my rent, and she
had one with her rent,” Ms. Ventura said,
“so I came here.” She had hoped, she said,
that their combined forces would provide a
solution to their money problems.
Ms. Toro receives $576 a month in
Social Security disability payments and
$200 a month in food stamps. Ms. Ventura
earns $836 a month from her job at
Roosevelt Hospital. The family’s rent is
$801, and their Consolidated Edison monthly
bills average $225. Food costs about $300
a month, with other expenses including
health insurance premiums, clothes and
school supplies.
Ms. Ventura, who delivers food to
patients at Roosevelt, used $1,800 — all of
her savings — to chip away at her sister’s
apartment debt, before turning to Catholic
Charities Archdiocese of NewYork, one of
the agencies supported by The New York
Times Neediest Cases Fund.
A Catholic Charities caseworker, Keisha
Edwards, combined $1,945 from Catholic
Charities’ HomeBase with $300 from the
Neediest Cases Fund to cover the bulk of
the deficit, and worked with the Bridge
Fund of New York, an agency devoted
to preventing homelessness, to get the
remaining $1,025.
Ms. Toro claimed the living room as her
sanctuary; she rarely strays from her bed
there, getting up only to use the bathroom.
It is frustrating. “I wasn’t able to move
around, and I used to go outside every
day,” she said.
Fortunately, she is easily amused. Large
parts of her day are spent watching Spanish
soap operas and the plethora of campy
movies broadcast by the Syfy channel.
Pranks are also part of Ms. Toro’s
entertainment. On occasion, she has called
Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Marianela Toro suffered a stroke that
caused most of her left side to be paralyzed.
A sister and nephew live with her.
for Yadriel to bring her a glass of water.
Once he hands it to her, Ms. Toro pretends
to be startled and douses her nephew with
the glass’s contents. Yadriel says he has
repaid her by hiding behind the bathroom
shower curtain and scaring her.
“I would do it all over again,” Yadriel
said of the constant help he had given to
his aunt for the past two years. “She always
took care of me growing up.”
Yadriel even tries to lends a financial
hand to the household, buying bags of
candy bars at BJ’s Wholesale Club and
selling them to his classmates. Ms. Toro
has two adult children who live on their
own and cannot help financially.
Despite the family’s tight budget and
Ms. Toro’s limited mobility, she remains
upbeat, relying on her family’s support.
On Thursday, a motorized wheelchair
arrived. She had one specific mission in
mind:“I’ll be in the streets, window shopping
with wheels.”
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
20

New York Times METRO Thursday, November 15, 2012
Left Blind After a Mugging, a Son Is
Still Driven to Support His Family
By JOHN OTIS
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Carlos Castro, 26, in the basement
apartment in Queens that he shares
with his mother.
Carlos Castro does not remember the last
thing he saw before losing consciousness
on March 7, 2003. He collapsed onto a
sidewalk in Flushing, Queens, after one of
the five attackers he had been fleeing
stabbed him in his chest, shoulder and
stomach.
But the memory of what Mr. Castro,
then 16, first glimpsed when his eyes
opened next is indelible. “It was black,” he
said. “I had no sight.”
The attack, prompted by Mr. Castro’s
refusal to hand over money to a group of
masked muggers who had approached him
and two friends, put him in a coma for two
weeks. He had suffered severe blood loss,
cardiac arrest and three strokes. The lack of
oxygen to his brain resulted in damage to
his occipital lobe, leaving him blind. His
attacker served time in prison for the crime.
Once out of the coma, Mr. Castro
remained in the hospital for a month of
recovery. Acceptance of his condition took
much longer. He recalled being in denial,
believing that his problem could be fixed
with eye drops. He spoke of a total aversion
to ever learning Braille. The first time he
was given a cane, he snapped it in half,
and refused to use it.
After being bruised from stumbling down
a flight of stairs and walking into objects,
Mr. Castro realized that a cane was
necessary. He also began looking for
organizations that would help him learn how
to adapt to life without sight. With their
help, he received training on how to do the
basics like cooking, shopping and even
navigating city streets.
Throughout it all, Mr. Castro, now 26,
fruitlessly sought a cure for his blindness,
often visiting doctors and even receiving
treatment in a hyperbaric chamber. His
mother, Ana, 66, flew him to Colombia in
2005, to meet with an herbalist, in the city
of Buga.
“The first night that I took the herbs,
I woke up and felt a warm sensation on
the back of my brain,” Mr. Castro said.
“I started just blinking, like something was
trying to turn on.”
Whether the herbs were the trigger is
unknown. But that moment marked the
beginning of the gradual restoration of his
eyesight. He began to discern shadows,
which led to his distinguishing shapes and
seeing colors. Though Mr. Castro is still
legally blind, his vision has improved to
the point where he can see some objects in
front of him and read 12-point print. His
peripheral vision remains damaged.
“I used to notice improvements every
three, four months,” he said. “Now it’s
maybe once a year.”
In 2010, something else was taken away
from him: his home. Mr. Castro’s stepfather
announced that he had met another woman
and planned to marry her, and told him
and his mother to leave the apartment they
all shared, Mr. Castro said. With nowhere
to go, the pair entered a homeless shelter.
Driven to find steadier work than the
numerous temporary jobs he held over
the years, and an employer who would not
discriminate against his visual impairment,
Mr. Castro sought the help of the Catholic
Charities Guild for the Blind. In April,
he completed interpreter classes and has
found freelance work as an interpreter for
Spanish-speaking patients and clients at
two hospitals, for the city Education
Department, and with the Administration
for Children’s Services.
The only jacket he owned was full of
holes, and his shoes were worn out. So
Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New
York, one of the agencies supported by
The NewYork Times Neediest Cases Fund,
withdrew $300 from the fund so that
Mr. Castro could purchase a suitable work
wardrobe.
With some of the money he has earned,
Mr. Castro paid for classes for his mother
to learn how to be a home attendant, in the
hope she will find work. Mr. Castro knows
it will be challenging for a person her age
to be hired. At the moment her only source
of income is $60 a month in food stamps,
while Mr. Castro receives $240 a month in
Social Security disability.
Mr. Castro now has three goals: to land a
full-time job, enroll in college to become a
physical therapist and secure an apartment
for him and his mother.
In October, he and his mother were
forced to leave the homeless shelter because
of the income earned from his freelance
work. The pair now live in a cramped
basement apartment in East Elmhurst,
Queens, that has just one mattress.
Mr. Castro said that it was frustrating to
run into these obstacles, and that despite
all his accomplishments, he was still left
in a financial limbo. He is trying to simply
stay optimistic.
“There’s people who invent stories to
get S.S.I., there’s just people who sit
all day, they don’t do nothing,” he said.
“It’s messed up, because I’m actually
trying.”
21
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Welcoming and Integrating
Immigrants and Refugees
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 22

New York Times METRO Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Borrowed Hearing Aid
Opens New World to Teenager
By JULIE TURKEWITZ
Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
Vladimir Gongora, 17, moved to New York
from El Salvador earlier this year.
He is hearing-impaired and had never
received formal training until he began
school in New York.
He thought he was the only one.
There were no other deaf people in
Cuyantepeque, El Salvador, the isolated
farming village where Vladimir Gongora,
17, lived for most of his life. Nestled
between mountains, the town also had no
health center and, until recently, no road
access for cars.
For Vladimir, there was also no school:
Because he could not hear or speak,
teachers shut him out, his family said.
For years he lingered by the school doors
at recess, waiting for other children to exit,
waiting for playmates. He communicated
only with his two sisters and grandparents,
using hand signals they had invented.
No one informed him that other deaf
people existed.
And so in 1997, Vladimir’s father, Jose
Gongora, left for the United States. First,
he aimed simply to make money for his
growing family. But as he learned more of
his son’s seclusion, a new, unshakable goal
emerged: He would bring Vladimir to New
York, where his son could get help.
“He didn’t hear, he didn’t speak,”
Mr. Gongora said, speaking in Spanish.
“But the understanding was there. I
thought: ‘He wants to be something.
Something — yes.’ ”
Since immigrating, Mr. Gongora has
risen at 5:30 a.m. to work for a landscaping
company, spending tens of thousands of
hours laying sprinklers and hanging
Christmas decorations. In 2003, he brought
his wife, Dolores, to New York.
And then in May, after more than a
decade away from his father, Vladimir
walked through the doors of the family’s
apartment in Flushing, Queens, and into
the arms of Mr. Gongora.
Since then,Vladimir’s world has exploded
into an ever-expanding kaleidoscope of
communication. In October, he began
attending the Lexington School for the
Deaf in Jackson Heights, Queens, which
often helps hearing-impaired children from
outside the United States. There, he is
learning American Sign Language. He has
begun to read and write. He has made
other hearing-impaired friends.
And, for the first time, Vladimir has met
deaf people with professions and families
of their own.
“He’s signing more, with the expectation
that people are going to understand him,”
said Julia Schafer, a caseworker at Catholic
Charities Archdiocese of New York who
works closely with the family.
When Vladimir began school, his family
realized that to practice new words,
he would need an inexpensive computer.
Through Catholic Charities, one of the
agencies supported by The New York
Times Neediest Cases Fund, Ms. Schafer
helped the family apply for a $440 grant
from the fund, and the Gongoras bought
a laptop.
On a recent Tuesday, Vladimir opened
the laptop to reveal a program designed to
teach sign language. His father stood by,
and the two began discussing Vladimir’s
trajectory. They have adopted a hand
language that is uniquely theirs. Their
arms began to fly. At school, “there are so
many children that don’t speak, just like
him,” Mr. Gongora said. “He felt like he
had company.”
And after knocking on the doors of the
hearing community for so many years,
Vladimir has finally found an opening.A test
recently revealed that he has 30 percent
hearing in one ear, and the Lexington
School lent him a hearing aid.
But at the end of each day, he must
leave the device behind.
It opens up the possibility that Vladimir
could begin to speak. Mr. Gongora wants
desperately to buy one for his son, but he
has no idea when he will be able to raise
the $1,500 needed for the purchase.
His monthly earnings at the landscaping
company, typically $2,400, disappear
quickly once the $1,550-a-month rent and
other bills are paid and food is bought for
Vladimir, his mother and his 2-year-old
sister. Anything extra goes back to El
Salvador, where Mr. Gongora and his wife
have two teenage daughters.
“He asks me, ‘¿Cuándo?’” Mr. Gongora
said. “ ‘When are we going to be able to
buy one?’ ”
For now, that goal is out of reach. “He says
he wants to work here,” said Mr. Gongora,
who never went to school, “and later get a
car. He dreams a lot, right?
“ ‘Everything in time,’ I tell him. ‘Step
by step.’ ”
23 Copyright ©2013 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

New York Times METRO Saturday, December 29, 2012
Venezuelan Finds Asylum,
and a Career, in New York
By REBECCA WHITE
It is very difficult for Maria Marquez, 33,
to talk about her past. She can be specific
about certain things, but not many. The
danger just feels too real.
“I’m afraid,” Ms. Marquez said anxiously
in her Elmhurst, Queens, apartment, an
intensity in her eyes. “There have been
kidnappings. People killed.”
A refugee from Venezuela, Ms. Marquez
carries herself with a confident yet cautious
air. She lives alone with her orange cat,
Max, who is less aware of her need to
mask fear.
“Where could he hide? This time he
outsmarted me,” Ms. Marquez said to
herself as she combed her tiny apartment
looking for Max, her friend and a source
of security. “Oh, there he is!”
Nestled inside a large purple bag, Max
barely moved when she pulled it away from
his body and placed him in her lap.
Ms. Marquez was granted asylum in the
United States in August. She first came to
this country in the late1990s, when she was
19, on a student visa to attend the University
of South Carolina.
“I had been threatened by Chávez youth
groups,” she said. “My parents thought I
should come here and study in the hopes
that things would get better. It got worse.”
Ms. Marquez was active in the Christian
Democratic Party in Venezuela, helping to
campaign against Hugo Chávez, the leader
of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela
before he became president in 1999.
Ms. Marquez’s father was a lawyer and
businessman, and her mother worked as a
congressional assistant for the Christian
Democrats.
“I was very devout; we tried to motivate
people to vote,” Ms. Marquez recalled.
“I was beaten up sometimes.”
Unrest in her home country pushed
Ms. Marquez to be successful in the
United States. After receiving her bachelor’s
degree, and then a master’s in social work,
she received a work visa and found a job as
a social worker with FEGS Health and
Human Services in New York.
She worked there for four years, happily.
“I loved my job,” she said. “I always wanted
to help people, ever since I was a kid.”
In June, however, her visa expired,
and she lost her job. Faced with having to
return to Venezuela, she had decided that
the only way to stay safe was to apply for
asylum: Ms. Marquez initiated her
application in the spring.
Though the application was approved in
August, she lost work and had to use all of
her savings to pay her bills.
Ms. Marquez’s monthly rent is $1,032;
food, electricity and other expenses run
more than $400 each month. Fearing
eviction and seeking help as a refugee,
she turned to Catholic CharitiesArchdiocese
of New York, one of the organizations
supported by The NewYork Times Neediest
Cases Fund, for help.
“I always kept in mind that I could
be the one in the shoes of my clients,”
Ms. Marquez said of the switch in roles
from social worker to client. “It feels
uncomfortable sometimes, but I am a human
being, and sometimes you are going to be
in situations where you ask for help.”
A social worker connected Ms. Marquez
to Match Grant, a federally financed
program for refugees that gave her $289
a month for expenses for four months,
beginning in September. She also received
a grant of $294 from the Neediest Cases
Fund, the cost of taking the NewYork State
social work licensing exam.
“I’m studying for the exam because it
will give me more money and more
opportunities to work,” she said. “I want to
work with foreigners and immigrants. I want
to help people to get where I am.”
This month, Ms. Marquez found
part-time employment as a school social
worker at the Western Queens Consultation
Uli Seit for The New York Times
Maria Marquez in her apartment in
Elmhurst, Queens. She has a part-time
job in social work and is preparing
for a licensing exam.
Center. She will not receive her first
paycheck, however, until Jan. 7, and she
still owes $1,600 in rent.
“Right now I’m behind,” she said, once
again wondering where Max had gone.
“I’m feeling that if I don’t get the money
before year’s end, they will send me to
the lawyers.”
Ms. Marquez’s studio apartment has
many nooks that can lure a cat into hiding.
The main room, which doubles as her
bedroom and living room, is cluttered with
odds and ends, chewed-up mouse toys,
clothing haphazardly strewed about and
awkwardly placed furniture. After apologizing
for the mess, Ms. Marquez disclosed
that she had a learning disability that
impaired her spatial orientation.
Organization has always been hard for
her, as is driving, she said, but she sees
the disability as yet another way she can
relate to people who also have difficulties
to overcome.
“I have strategized many things as an
adult,” she said, adding: “But my mom’s
going to kill me! ‘You, in front of that
camera with that house so messy?’ ”
Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
24

New York Times METRO Tuesday, November 20, 2012
A Survivor of Torture Finds
a Safe Haven in New York
By JOHN OTIS
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Ahamed Idrissou, right, with his wife,
Ziyratou Moussa, holding child,
and some of their other children at
their Bronx apartment.
Ahamed Idrissou, his wife and their seven
children all live in a small two-bedroom
apartment in the West Bronx. And while
space is tight, Mr. Idrissou is not complaining:
they are together and safe.
In his native Togo, which had long been
under the control of a military dictatorship,
Mr. Idrissou was persecuted for years,
imprisoned and tortured. He was granted
asylum in the United States after fleeing
in 2006, but his family remained in Togo
until 2010.
“It was a very difficult time for me,”
Mr. Idrissou, 55, said of the years of
separation. “I was afraid to call my family
because the government listens to phone
calls.”
The government, which was under the
rule of Gen. Gnassingbé Eyadéma for almost
40 years, operated with a heavy hand,
making Togo, in West Africa, one of the
continent’s most closed and repressive
nations. “People talk about change, but I
tried to do something to change the
government,” Mr. Idrissou said. He was a
member of Togo’s Cotocoli ethnic group,
and had only been loosely involved with
the democratic movement that began in1990.
He became an official member of a political
party, the Democratic Convention ofAfrican
Peoples, citing the vast disparity between
those with the power and those without.
“I gave money to the opposition,” he said.
In Togo, he said, “People die for nothing.
It costs only 55 cents to buy medicine, and
people still die.”
Mr. Idrissou’s politics, ethnicity and
business status had placed him on the
government’s radar. He owned his own
business importing and exporting cars,
and selling car parts from Africa to Europe
and the United States. He also owned and
operated commercial buses.
In 1993, he was arrested and taken to a
military camp where he was interrogated
under torture. For five weeks, he was
repeatedly beaten and humiliated; some of
his teeth were pulled out.
He was released but was arrested,
tortured and imprisoned several more times,
he said.
His buses were repeatedly commandeered.
On one occasion in 2004, soldiers
removed four passengers from a bus and
made Mr. Idrissou take a government
official on a two-hour trip. The waiting
passengers were forced to their knees at
gunpoint until Mr. Idrissou returned.
After General Eyadéma’s death in
2005, the military installed his son Faure
Gnassingbé, and then engineered his
formal election; that election incited a tide
of violence and civil dissent. Mr. Idrissou
said the situation became even more
dangerous for him.
In September 2006, one of his sons
warned him that men had come to their
home to arrest him again. Fearing for his
life, Mr. Idrissou did not return home but
fled to the United States, where he was
granted asylum. He was determined to
have his family join him, and for that he
needed money. With help from Catholic
Charities of the Archdiocese of New York,
he obtained the green card he needed to
get a job.
An opportunity came along one day while
he was riding the subway. He spotted a
fellow countryman wearing a yellow jacket
and learned that the man worked for
CitySights, the New York City tour bus
agency. It was not long before he was
donning the bright uniform and making
his living on street corners, encouraging
tourists to take sightseeing jaunts around
Manhattan.
In 2010, he had earned enough money
to send for his family. They arrived in
September of that year. But not all of his
children made it. His daughter Karima died
in 2008 at age 16. “She died from typhoid
fever,” he said. “There was no medication.”
He and his wife, Ziyratou Moussa, 43,
had another child, Idris, now 9 months, who
was born in the United States. The rest of
his children, ranging in age from 16 to 20,
are in high school and learning English.
In his job selling tickets, Mr. Idrissou
earns $1,032 a month; the family receives
$470 monthly in food stamps and a housing
subsidy. But the family’s income barely
covers expenses.To help, Catholic Charities,
one of the agencies supported by The New
York Times Neediest Cases Fund, secured
a grant from the fund of $310 to buy the
books, backpacks and other school supplies
for the children.
Mr. Idrissou knows he is lucky to have
found a safe haven. He participates in the
Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of
Torture to cope with his past, but remains
concerned for Togo’s future. “In America,
people cry, but there is food,” he said. “In
my country, the bellies are very empty.
Maybe if the government is changed, my
country will change for the better.”
25 Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Featured Agency Directory
The Catholic Charities, a federation of 90 agencies in New York City and the Hudson Valley, provides services
that touch almost every human need. Below are those federation agencies that had their work with clients
highlighted in the 2012-2013 New York Times Neediest Cases Campaign and featured in this booklet.
Catholic Big Sisters and Big Brothers, NYC
137 E 2nd Street
New York, NY 10009
(212) 475-3291
Dominican Sisters Family Health Service
299 North Highland Avenue
Ossining, NY 10562
(914) 941-1654
Catholic Charities Community Services
1011 First Avenue 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022
(212) 371-1000
Elinor Martin Residence for Mother & Child
86 Mayflower Avenue
New Rochelle, NY 10801
(914) 235-0505
Covenant House New York
460 W 41st Street
New York, NY 10036
(212) 613-0300
Grace Institute
1233 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10065
(212) 832-7605
CREATE, Inc.
73 Lenox Avenue
New York, NY 10026
(212) 663-1975
St. Raymond Community Outreach Center
71 Metropolitan Oval 2nd Floor
Bronx, NY 10462
(718) 824-0353
Project Manager: Pierette Imbriano
Produced by: Amelia Lopez
Written/edited & compiled by: Alice Kenny
Publisher: Joseph Ferruzzi Associates, Inc.
Designer: Ken Rabinowitz
26

CATHOLIC CHARITIES PROVIDES HELP AND CREATES HOPE.
FOR HELP: 888-744-7900
TO HELP: 646-794-2051
1011 FIRST AVENUE •11TH FLOOR • NEW YORK, NY 10022-4112
www.catholiccharitiesNY.org
27 Copyright ©2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.