Show Joe Humanity Has His Back

I’m not sure where to start with this plea for help for my former employee, and current friend, Joe Ritchie, so I’ll start with the accident. Joe was injured in horrific fashion while doing his job as a maintenance supervisor for the company he has worked with since I sold my company in May. Joe was working on a skid steer with a hydraulic leak when the bucket came crashing down on his head. The good…Joe somehow managed to escape a traumatic brain injury (he was very, very lucky), the bad…Joe ended up with a fractured jaw (on both sides), more stitches and staples than I could count to put his face and scalp back together and a fractured bone in his vertebrae. Joe does not have insurance to cover his medical costs or the lost wages as a result of his time away from work. He is a single father to a special little girl, and an extremely loving father to his two wonderful boys.

It’s important for everyone who is considering donating to learn what makes Joe such a special guy. Joe has overcome several lifetimes worth of trials and tribulations to become the man he is today. Without getting into specifics, nothing has come easy for him, and he has been given every reason to give up trying many times along the way. Despite the unfair hand he has been dealt over and over again, Joe refused the temptation to take the easy way out and give up at every obstacle and, over the past 14 years, has established himself as one of the finest human beings I have come across in my lifetime. He always went above and beyond with his work and was a model employee from day one. On more occasions than I can count, I watched Joe take money (and time), that he did not have, out of his own pocket to help individuals who could not help themselves. Joe taught me that to truly sacrifice for another person, it must hurt a little bit. This lesson coming from a man who never held his hand out and refused to ask for help all along the way. Watching the way Joe dotes on his children would make any father envious. His children are absolutely the light of his life.

I spoke with Joe a few hours before his accident. He was over the moon about a job he had been offered and accepted with a new company that would provide him with full benefits for his family and more money than he had made in his life. I was so proud of Joe because he would FINALLY be rewarded for his relentless pursuit of a better life for his children he had been seeking for well over a decade. Joe was due to start his new job the first week of September…he was 7 working days away from a life he had absolutely earned. Because of this accident, Joe now finds himself with what will be a massive medical bill, no income for at least the next several months due to his inability to work, and an uncertain future…a truly unfair reward for a person who has given so much of himself to make this world a better place to live for so many.

Joe is at a point in his life where he needs to see that humanity will help support a person who is attempting to live his best life, even if they are a stranger to him. He WILL NOT ask for help, he WILL NOT pout for himself, he WILL continue to persevere and climb out of this hole with or without your donation, because he knows he must for the sake of his children.

Please, please find it in your heart to show Joe amazing things can be born from tragedy and that he has only seen the tip of the iceberg as far as the kindness that exists in this world (and the Greater Cincinnati community in particular)! Joe needs a happy ending in the worst way, and anyone who donates any amount can lay their head on their pillow at night and know that they were a part of that happy ending.

Thank you!