Elisabeth or, as we affectionately call her, Oma is our grandmother. She is a source of love, laughter, kindness, and safety in our lives. Oma puts others before herself and made sure everyone she knew from her family, to her neighbors felt cared for and is a cherished member of our family and her community. The idea of anyone wanting to hurt her is almost unimaginable, unfortunately, we don’t need to try to imagine this as she has unfortunately become a victim of a truly despicable act, one perpetrated by her own daughter, Rosanna, no less.

On Friday, January 26 of this year (2024), Oma was found by police in Maryland on a highway, dressed inappropriately for the weather, with no ID, no debit or credit cards, no phone, no meds, and little idea of where she was. She was disorientedly looking for help to find where she was and a way to reach family, she did not know how long she had been out for, and what she remembered was having been taken by Rosanna to go hiking and Rosanna saying she would be, “right back,” and not returning. Rosanna held on to all of her valuables and then abandoned Oma. The police could tell she wasn’t doing well and rushed her to the nearest hospital where they determined she was dehydrated, malnourished, was experiencing heart failure, and had developed fluid in her lungs as a result. As soon as she was able to get a call to us in Lancaster, Pennsylvania we headed immediately to meet her at the hospital. She was there all night and released in poor, but stable condition in the early morning on Saturday the 27th of January with the knowledge that we would be taking her to our home and monitoring her symptoms closely and helping her with all tasks to ensure she would recover. The hospital gave her a prescription for heart meds on release, and we were able to fill that. Unfortunately, while we were able to track down who her insurance was and get them to send a new card, we were not able to get it in time to get these vital and life saving meds and had to pay out of pocket.

On the evening of the 27th, we noticed that she still seemed off. Oma may be 88, but she was still in good physical condition and kept herself busy by going for walks and short hikes. That evening she struggled going even about 10 feet and was having trouble breathing when she tried to sit up. We called the hospital she had been seen at in Maryland, who told us to take her to urgent care the next day. When we arrived at urgent care on Sunday, January 28th, she was immediately transferred to the emergency room where she was held for observation for 48 hours. She was again released into our care under careful watch with instructions to bring her back immediately if anything changed or got worse.

Throughout this whole ordeal, Rosanna was nowhere to be found until she was later arrested on unrelated charges. This meant that we had to travel to her home, with police, and enter via a, luckily, unlocked window to get into her home where Oma was staying after Rosanna sold Oma’s home out from under her after abandoning her before in a hotel in North Carolina. We were able to find many expired forms of identification, but not her birth certificate, with the aid of the police at Rosanna’s home in Delaware. We are working towards trying to get her a new, valid ID, but as of right now we are running into issues with that. While we were there, multiple neighbors informed us that Rosanna had bragged to them about spending all of Oma’s money and they had been very concerned by Oma’s sudden disappearance in connection to this.

As of this time, we are unable to recover Oma’s assets as Rosanna had coerced her into assigning her Power of Attorney in 2023. As of right now, Oma has no funds and no home to her name and we are housing and caring for her for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, we were already stretched thin before this, often relying on foodbanks to be able to feed ourselves and have enough money to pay for our home. We want to give Oma the best care possible while we work towards legal remedies for this horrible situation. We, humbly, ask that you help as you can weather that’s donating to this campaign or sharing it with your circle so that we can recoup the costs involved in saving our Oma and ensure we have the funds to care for her and ourselves over the next two months. Below you will find a breakdown of costs so you know exactly what the money from this campaign is going to:

$1429.59 for her hospital stay on the 26th

$100.00 a week for groceries for 8 weeks totalling $800.00

$300.00 incidental fund for things such as clothes or OTC medications

$46.41 for gas and parking for the trips to MD from PA to get Oma and from PA to DE to get her birth certificate/identification

$330.20 for her most recent prescription pick up

$320.88 for when we need to refill her prescriptions (one was not recurring)

$65.00 for her urgent care visit

This is how the total of $3,292 will be spent, we thank you so much for your help and support and will update you as soon as we can on how Oma is doing.