My Aunt Dorothy

I'm Rikki Simons and I'm running this campaign for my Aunt Dorothy Richards. Dorothy is last of eight children on my mother's side. She helped raise me in the 1970's while she pursued her interests in cartooning. This involved her sending her characters to celebrities and asking them to name them. Aunt Dorothy tells me she has over 800 characters named by actors, politicians, and other famous people. She hopes to collect them all into a book sometime in the future. You can see a few celebrity-named characters from her collection here: tavicat.com/dorothy .


Aunt Dorothy is now in her 50s and she has taken care of other people all of her life, spending 10 years caring for the elderly and another 24 years working with special needs clients. These are all low paying jobs that are necessary and beneficial to her community. She lives in Salem Oregon with her partner, June with their many dogs and cats.

Dorothy's partner June works at Walmart and has been sick and in and out of the hospital many times the last couple years. This has financially hurt Dorthy and June and put them behind in house payments, and though they filed bankruptcy to cover the hospital bills, newer hospital bills have resulted in the bank foreclosing on their home.

Dorthy and June now have little over a month to find a new place to live but no money to help in their search. As Dorothy described it to me, "I'm so fearful we will be homeless. I have had many struggles in my life but homeless was not one of them."

This GoFundMe is to help raise enough money to find Dorothy and June a new place to rent and will hopefully cover the cost of moving, a few month's rent to get them settled in, and their deposit.


Please help me rescue my Aunt Dorothy from possible homelessness! I would never have worked in animation if she hadn't first shown me how to draw when I was a child.

Thank you everyone!