Emergency- Family of 7 Needs Help

Robin Gray is organizing this fundraiser.

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The Need: My daughter is self-employed as the bread-winner for her family of 7 and has suffered a terrible accident, leaving her temporarily disabled. She had a broken tibia and fibula, and pilon fracture that required surgery. Due to a temporary loss of work, they are short money needed for bills and facing eviction. Several of their utilities have been disconnected as well. She just needs a little help to get by until payments start coming in again, to keep the children in their home and allow her to recover from this injury.

Any other donations that come in toward the main goal will go towards:

- Late fees on rent and other bills
- Keeping utilities on / getting services restored that were turned off for non-payment
- Restoring phone service
- Gas for getting to therapies and appointments
- A small birthday for oldest daughter who is turning 14 on the 19th
- Paying November rent on time
- Supplies/food/medical care for their small dog
- Lisa skipped her annual eye exam due to financial obligations and I found out is wearing 4 year old glasses with an outdated prescription because she ran out of contacts. Good vision allows her to do her job so I'd like to help her with this if we can.

Lisa really needs an exercise bike for her recovery and physical therapy. She can't walk yet but will be able to use a stationary bike. Efforts to find one on Craigslist or Freecycle have turned up nothing so far. If anyone has one or knows where she can get one cheap, please let us know.

What Your Donations Have Been Used for So Far:

(some things were donated directly so we inputted the cash value to the fund)

$700 for 1 month rental assistance (to help w/ where she was short)

$650 Repaired van out of the shop

$100 Pre-surgery payment (required for cash paying patients)

$200 On prescriptions and medical supplies, guaze, etc.

$200 School supplies, clothing and other things needed for the kids to start school

$400 Utilities- gas, electric, internet (required to work) and water

$113 Food, gas and other various needs like toilet paper and soap

EDIT 9/28/2014: Lisa has worked a deal with her rental company and they are willing to work with her based on past rental history and her accident. However, she needs $1500 by Oct 1 in order to avoid going to court over the eviction and a big client fell through. Her other projects won't pay quickly enough to save the situation so she's looking for more work or any donations to help them through this rough time.

You can also help Lisa and her family by purchasing any of her services which are now on sale. http://socialmediasatisfied.com/friday-blowout-sale/

She has insurance for her kids but not for herself (as she was in between plans after federal health care changes took effect). This means she has $40,000+ of new hospital bills. But that is not what we are asking for help with.

What we want is to lighten her load a bit and provide for the family where it is desperately needed.

Being a self-employed freelancer, she depends highly on her savings to get the family through slow times, waiting on invoices to pay or emergencies. The problem is, she had too many emergencies in one year (more on this below) and that savings was whiddled away by the time her accident occured.

EDIT 9-18-14: Since posting this, the bills have fallen behind from the gap in her work at the accident time. As a result, they have an eviction notice over the $300 they are still short + late fees and several utilities have been disconnected or are scheduled for disconnection. She's making money but it's all coming in too late to keep things on.

She has worked every day since her accident and even worked on the day of her surgery, never quitting, in order to get her family through this tough spot. She didn't even get to rest and recover properly. And then, a large project she worked on for 12 days in order to pay her rent did not get paid on time and the client is stalling and making excuses.

Here are some immediate needs I'd like to help them with:

-Van out of shop ($650) : DONE!
- Tires for the van to make it drivable ($300): DONE!
- 1 month rent to avoid eviction in Oct ($1495) : DONE!
- Assistance paying some of the initial bills while she works out arrrangements for reduction/assistance on the bills ($1500)
- Help with prescriptions, out of pocket costs
- Some assistance with household items (toilet paper, trash bags, etc) for a short time
- Assistance with needed items for rehab like an exercise bike (she's non-weight bearing)

A Series of Unfortunate Events
Things were going very well for the family of 7 until this past year.

It started when their savings was drained after one child spent 7 1/2 weeks in a hospital that was an hour away. Some of the kids are special needs (autism, ADHD, other mental health, Celiac disease, seizure disorder, eosinophilic esophagitis, asthma, and other autoimmune disorder) so every week is full of appointments, therapies and some out of pocket expenses the insurance doesn't cover.

Then, one of the two vehicles broke down.

After fixing it (again reducing the small savings they were trying to rebuild), the other vehicle broke down.

Then, a large, regular client who covered the bulk of her income shut down business, leaving her scrambling for new ways to replace that income- and fast!

With the savings deleted and money low, they were living paycheck to paycheck and even one late-paying client throws a monkey wrench in their lives so things have been behind.

Last week her youngest daughter had surgery.

As a family, they started making changes to get by on a lower income until things got back on track once again, how they were used to.

They came to the conclusion they would have to enroll the kids back in public school instead of homeschooling to help save money. This would allow her all day to work instead of teaching kids and would hopefully help rebuild thier savings and get back on track. It was a sacrifice the family would have to make, although they didn't want to.

They had cut back all the expenses they could and they have no credit cards, no loans, no car payments- just rent and utilities. They do not live frivously and were not in a position to afford even the most basic of needs.

It would take about 1-3 months of living tight to work out of this hole and start to rebuild their savings again. But they had a plan and they were committed to working for it.

Then... something terrible happened. This weekend my daughter broke her leg.

It's a terrible break of the tibia and fibula and she will have to have surgery this week. With no medical insurance, this means big hospital bills as well as missed work, hurting their family income yet again.

I want to help and unfortunately, I am not able to do anything financially. Their family van has been in the shop all summer and they still owe $650 to get it back. Then it also needs a new set of tires to be safe to drive, which is another $300. Her husband needs this to get kids back and forth to school and appointments/therapies.

They need to be able to maintain their rent and household expenses for this month so they don't get evicted while she undergoes surgery.

This is a good, hardworking family who just needs a little help to stay on track after a string of bad luck.

They are making changes to save, to cut back anyplace they can and to save their home but it's not enough now that she has this serious injury. Your donations buy them some security and some time to get back on their feet.

I've created a wish list of some of their areas of greatest need so you can see what your donation is helping with. If you're unable to give financially at this time, please share and say prayers.

My daughter and her children give very freely to others. Now I am asking for just a little help for them in this very difficult time.

Thank you for anything you can do to help!

(Here are some pictures of who you are helping.)