Help Nokay and Luca during Nokay’s Knee Surgery

Hi, I am writing this GoFundMe as the friend of Nokay and Luca. My name is Jeremy, and my wife, Mera, and I and our kids have the awesome privilege of having Nokay and Luca as our neighbors and friends! Nokay and Luca are vintage-clothing sellers and source and sell vintage FULLTIME. They work hard and we watch them packing and unpacking their work on the daily (like nosey/good neighbors).

Recently, Nokay injured his knee badly. Through tests and waiting in pain, he found out it’s a torn meniscus and it’s going to need surgery. The surgery isn’t scheduled until September 5th and afterward, it could require another 6 weeks to heal without putting weight on it, followed by weeks of rehabbing. When Nokay first injured his knee in July, he was in pain and totally immobile for a couple weeks. He since has received some treatment that’s reduced pain and enabled him to walk some, but after surgery he will again be unable to do most of the tasks required to run his share of their family business or maintain normal daily responsibilities and help take care of their animals. That leaves Luca, who deals with disabilities and debilitating chronic pain flares, working very hard to keep things going and covering most of the work for their business.

Nokay and Luca sell their vintage online, but mostly in-person at weekly markets that require traveling, a lot of lifting, packing their inventory, setting up, while also being present at the markets to sell it and tearing it all back down. They hand-source the clothes themselves daily, requiring a lot of leg work (pun intended) locally to maintain inventory. Nokay and Luca are continuing to work to maintain their clothing business while also trying to prevent more pain and damage to Nokay’s knee. Because of this injury and the wait time for surgery, they have had to miss out on some markets and sales they count on.

We started this Go-FundMe as a way to help cover their mortgage and bills during the 3-4 month period of when Nokay’s knee injury happened and he couldn’t use it, the period of time they have had to wait for surgery and the time Nokay will need to stay off it after the surgery. In the meantime they also had unexpected expenses come up on top of the loss to their typical sales. Let’s pull together as a community around them to help relieve the stress and anxiety of these two while Nokay’s knee is out of order!

(You can also help by buying from Lowercase Vintage (@lowercase_vintage online or at their booths), using venmo (@nokayyy or @bufflehedd) or reaching out to Nokay and Luca to help with meals/food runs during recovery.)