For the 32 years I have known Steve, he has always been actively trying to improve the quality of life for others. Even after a major medical setback and seven years in a nursing home, Steve is still trying to improve the quality of life of his fellow nursing home residents. In those years, he worked tirelessly through his online networks resulting in: five artificial and two real Christmas trees, over one hundred and fifty pieces of men’s & women’s clothing, a couple of dozen shoes and slippers, five fans for bedrooms & 2 for community spaces to help make the rooms more comfortable in high heat, and anything else residents individually needed or would improve their community activities room.

His more considerable donations for other residents include over thirty televisions installed on their walls at the foot of residents' beds and five electric wheelchairs to help other residents get out of their bedrooms and participate in activities.

As Steve lay in one hospital’s emergency room and then a second hospital's emergency room for over twenty-four hours fighting for his life, while surrounded by all his roommates, his sister and close friends, his home was being ransacked. Almost everything Steve owned of any value was stolen, down to his beloved leather motorcycle riding coats and pants and the textbooks he used to tutor his peer students. Steve spent over three and a half months in the hospital fighting to be able to continue living. He was then moved to a skilled nursing home where he struggled daily for over fourteen months to be classified as expected to be alive the next day.

He has had an incredible medical recovery, but he cannot move forward and out of the nursing home. For over three years, Steve has been trying to leave his nursing home only to hit brick wall after brick wall, which is out of his control, obstructing his leaving. As his best friend, I am writing this to help him restart his life and doctoral work by helping Steve get the money he needs to do both.

Steve has been helping strangers and his greater community since I met him. Over all 32 years, he has always been a member of the Board of Directors of at least one Community Benefit Non-Profit. Even after his life and death struggles and long nursing home recovery, Steve has always been an active working member on the Board of Directors of at least one and some of the time two Community Benefit Non-Profits. He is always looking for the positive and how others are doing. If he sees a need in any community, even some he is not priorly affiliated with, he reaches out to help and build.

I met Steve when I was a struggling model with the only safe place for me to live was in the loft at a mutual photographer friend, George’s studio. Steve had known George professionally because he owned a talent management agency. Steve met me several times during business trips, learned of my housing needs, and offered me a job as a housekeeper in his home in exchange for rent.

After Six months, I asked him why I was there because his home was always spotless; he cooked, cleaned, and even insisted on doing his and his daughter’s laundry himself. His response was because he was a single father of a six-month-old baby girl, he only needed me around for the rare occasion he needed to go to the local grocery store for fresh produce and proteins. So, I only had to watch his daughter three or four times a month for no more than forty-five minutes. Steve was helping me and did not really need me. This was the first time I realized who Steve was and how big his heart was.

I learned he started working with and then being elected to the board of directors of various local and statewide non-profits since he was sixteen years old, over a decade before I met him. Since I have known Steve, he volunteered to work for free for ten months to be the first director of a newly forming non-profit that took in donated old and sometimes obsolete computers, refurbished them and placed them with needing families and individuals. Steve utilizes his background in product and business development. He has owned and helped others start up multiple successful businesses over the years.

I heard a story from a local non-profit thrift store employee about how Steve used to buy so many costumes and unique clothing and accessories. The store manager would hold items in the back for him because he never asked for a discount and was happy to get the gems. He would use clothing, costumes and accessories of all kinds to help facilitate teaching creative dramatics with a non-profit he was involved with and on the board of for over twenty-two years.

One year the thrift store manager called to ask Steve if he had a pirate costume as the county-wide newspaper wanted to highlight the thrift store known as the Discovery Shop, which benefited the municipal hospital auxiliary. Steve rearranged his whole work day; in under three hours, he had gone out, purchased a costly new frilly shirt, and put together the rest of a great Pirate’s costume. He was at the thrift store in time for the photographer’s deadline the same day. He had everything from a befeathered three-point pirate’s hat to black boots with a shiny big metal buckle over the foot.

Steve returned to higher education in 2010 to become certified in a skill toward completing a new product he was developing for university students' transportation. The dean at his campus told Steve the way to help improve the student experience & engagement was through student government. He successfully ran for student government for three years; in his first year, he served his students as the State Student Senate Representative and was elected Student President for the last two years.

During his first year in student government, Steve learned about the high numbers of students dropping out, at-risk students with their future benefit to themselves and society is lost. At-risk students are those that come from tough environments where education is the rarity and not the norm sometimes: gang, drug addiction and sales, and abuse environments. The doctoral path had been working on was to lower the number of drop-out at-risk students all over the world attending two-year colleges.

Steve invested what little savings he could save up and borrowed a total of over $2,600.00 to purchase and register a 2009 medium size SUV. He was forced to delay smoging his vehicle for over two years, by three different bedroom restricted Covid-19 infection state health department and the governor ordered lockdowns for almost all twenty-four of those months. During these delays, a part of his vehicle emissions system on his vehicle quit working correctly and is no longer available for California. Leaving Steve completely broke with no way to escape his nursing home. Steve needs a small pickup or medium or smaller-sized SUV because he must use an electric mobility scooter to move around caused by accident in his nursing home.

I am seeking $4,500 to help him buy a vehicle that can accommodate the electric mobility scooter Steve must use to get around. He also needs $1,800.00 for two months of expenses to live on to pay: his rent, share of utilities, groceries, and gas to get to his many monthly medical appointments until his medical disability re-application is approved. Please help me help a Benevolent Humanitarian get back out into society where he can thrive and continue to help improve lives in all the communities, he finds himself in.

Here is the link to his GoFundMe

https://gofund.me/c7964ebb