Sandra Rock: Health & Safety, Urgent Relocation

Minister Sandra Pendleton-Rock

My Stepmother is a 75-year-old widowed minister seeking financial assistance to urgently relocate elsewhere due to the saga of living in a toxic apartment with environmental damages, violations and consistent excessive noise pollution from construction /demolition/alterations. All of this has caused uninhabitable, health-related physical, emotional, and psychological traumatic harm.

This is no easy task at her age. The costs to pay back rent and to move are great. Storage, hiring movers, and finding new living accommodations are huge. She is an Elder and a Shero for dealing with all of this, all the while seeking to continue her Community Ministry. She is an Elder and a Shero, and she needs your assistance!

This has been her home for 23 years. She rents the unit from the co-op owner in a multi-family building. The hope was that accommodations during this period would’ve been provided by the owner, Board, and Property Management, but it has not been done. The City of East Orange, where she lives, has been helpful.

However, now again out of work, struggling to meet bills, and navigating the scourge of COVID-19, on February 23, 2021-January 2022, construction began on a renovation in the apartment directly above hers. As an elder who is again stressed by these occurrences, she finds out that the apartment above is flooded and leaking down her walls into her living room and kitchen. More stress. If that is not enough, in addition to the banging, excessive noise, drilling, and knocking down of walls upstairs, after another mishap upstairs, construction dust and soot were blown into her apartment through the vents because of incompetent prep by the construction people upstairs. In addition, construction continues…on her floor in additional apartments. Now she has additional stress of health concerns about mold; she is breathing in the potentially toxic dust and dealing with the constant noise pollution from the construction of 3 units above her unit and in six units on her floor. She has had to cobble together the funds to pay for a private inspection of her apartment to determine the seriousness of the mold and dust. She has had to live in only one room of her apartment – her bedroom – her kitchen and living room are inhabitable due to the construction dust. She is in the kitchen just to grab some food and takes it back to her room. Her personal physicians support her with confirmation that she is experiencing distress – fear, worry, headaches, lung congestion, worsening of health problems, and difficulty sleeping. Her health, both physical and mental, has been deeply affected by this latest round of struggle.

In addition to devoting her life to her family and caring/advocating for others, (she devotes her life to caring/advocating for others specifically children and families of prisoners/returning citizens, homeless women, elders and people living with Alzheimer’s, in addition to HIV/AIDS and ALANON Support Groups) she raised two children as a single parent until she met her elder husband who was 24 years older than her. He was a 40-year East Orange resident from 1960-1987, World War II Veteran and Tuskegee Airman. When he contracted lung cancer in the mid-1990s, she cared for him until he died in 1995, resulting in losing her small medicolegal office management transcription business and her home in Maplewood, NJ.

She then set about becoming a licensed Christian Minister in May 2000 and has struggled to complete her studies, incurring student debt. Over the years, three different car accidents, including one life-threatening, due to her having so much on her mind, have resulted in pain and the need for chiropractic, physical and holistic alternative therapies that she struggles to pay for. Yet, along the way, she continued to serve her community as Special Education Para-educator in Irvington, Maplewood/South Orange, NJ empowering and coaching youngsters with academic/behavioral problems to make positive life changes and improve in class. She shepherded and established the SHARE Food Program in Maplewood, East Orange, and Newark, NJ, and stood by elders in her building and immediate communities, advocating as a source of love and understanding.

From 2010, she advocated for her mother’s deteriorating Alzheimer's disease until her mother’s death on October 30, 2017, which put her in a financial bind, struggling to find the solution to her own back rent that is owed, find the money to pay facilities that cared for her mother’s hip injury when she fell and her day-to-day care. She worked so hard to care for her mother while navigating the confusing medical insurance boondoggle. At the same time, she juggled getting her Teaching/Theological degrees, doing online courses, and keeping the food share program going, and she signed on to mentor children of incarcerated parents in Newark, NJ. The facility where her mother was being cared for wanted their money, the insurance company and her mother’s past employer haggled back and forth over her mother’s insurance eligibility to pay for care. She was stressed, caught in the middle of all of this.

She transitioned to work at the Essex County Correctional Facility (2012-2019), Newark, NJ, where she instructed Positive Change life skills classes and mentored and graduated young and older men to prepare them to be stand-up returning citizens. Her strong advocacy for the programs she instituted did not receive the support of the management at the correctional facility. Sadly, she had to part ways with the program and the young men who supported her and lovingly called her “Rev. Rock”, “the Harriet Tubman” of Essex County Correctional Facility. While working at the facility, she started the Harvest of Blessings children’s educational learning-by-experience program and provided school supplies. She also created a seniors/families monthly fresh food distribution program as a beacon to help her community through essential milestones, especially during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Minister Pendleton-Rock needs assistance for accommodations and relocation. Again, this is no easy task at her age. The costs to pay back rent and to move are great. The stresses of hiring movers, paying for storage, and finding new living accommodations are enormous.

Once again, she is an Elder and a Shero for dealing with all of this, all the while seeking to continue her Community Ministry. She is an Elder and a Shero, and she needs your assistance!

Colin, her Stepson