Hello, I’m Omara.

Stocks weren’t the only thing that dropped this week!

On Wednesday evening, April 2, 2025, our biggest fear happened.

And it wasn’t just tariffs doing damage.

But first, a little background.

I live in an old house in Lakewood, Ohio. It’s 130 years old, built in 1895. It’s been passed down through the family for almost 100 of those years.

But what has been here longer is the Pin Oak tree in the backyard. We believe it’s close to 200 years old, and it is enormous! Before homes were built in this area, there was an old park. This tree was probably one of the few left when they developed the area.

But time and recent weather events may have pushed the old tree to more than it can bear. Last year, our city experienced tornado activity. It stressed the old tree, and it lost a limb. Fortunately, it missed the house.

Wednesday, it didn’t miss. An even larger limb hit the roof, tearing a hole into the attic. In fact, it impacted the homes on both sides. Earlier that day, in the morning, there was rain and lightning. One bolt was very close by. It created a thunder shock wave that was the loudest I had ever heard. It rattled the house like an earthquake.

Well, as I found out, such enormous thunder waves can also damage homes… and trees. We believe it weakened what was already an old oak and stressed the limb to its final breaking point.

This is how the bough breaks. And it punched a hole in the roof and dropped branches into 3 houses!

But now I turn to “the ask”.

I do have home insurance, but there is a $9000 deductible.

I am going on 69 and am on Social Security. My income from that and a small teaching pension is just over $1000 a month. You can probably understand the problem now. I can get by under normal circumstances, but not with a devastating event like this.

So for this reason, I am hoping that you could help me raise the money for this deductible. Through the pictures, I believe you can see that the cost to fix this will be considerable, and I don’t have any estimate on the damage or any insurance quote. But I still will need to put $9000 in before the insurance kicks in with the rest of the costs.

I hope you can help me out. Any bit at all will be sincerely and gratefully appreciated.

Thank you. And please, if you know me, I am embarrassed that I have to beg for help. If you decide to donate, I would rather not know who you are. It is just so hard for me to beg for money in the first place. But being poor, I do need some help.