MaryLou showed up to visit. I am convinced she is lonely. She was looking for a shovel we hadn't used the day before. I told her where the one was that we did use. Later she came back and told us it wasn't the one she was looking for. Again, I think she was looking for a visit.
We split our teams. I took a team to work at Carol and Kate's house. Carol was an Olympic swimmer, and she was ready for the NYC Marathon that was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy.
Trudy our NYSUM liason spent the day inside helping clean and organize the inside of the house. Kate told me that her brother had decided to get going and do the interior of the house. The interior was amazingly put together.
We spent the day digging through the sand at their house to get the garbage out.
This is the K triple threat of Kim, Kirsten and Kelly. Kelly is digging out aluminum siding that was brown, the house we were working on was blue.
Isaac digging through sand for debris.
This is my very hard working crew, including Trudy (NYSUM Leader), Carol and Kate (holding the ball)
The one thing that impacted me working here was how positive they were, how totally focused on "getting back to normal"
Kate and I had a conversation while the teens were working. During the storm, which hit their house about 10 pm--they "floated" over to the neighbours roof--Kate was struck by a floating car and broke her collar bone. The stress of the storm had caused her to have a seizure--the seizure caused her retina to detach from her eye. She has been refused treatment, her insurance company won't cover her.
I asked about Obama Care. She said it won't cover her...she is considered "too rich".
She is 23, has been homeless since the storm, (they have no power, no heat), her collar bone is fusing to her shoulder and she is now blind in one eye.
I thought my year was tough.
Look at the smile on her face, she didn't stop smiling from the time we got there to the time we left. Even while arguing with the insurance company.
Before we left, she had an appointment booked with the best eye guy in New York.
We left and decided to go find an Outback Steakhouse. We were all hungry and meat sounded really, really good.
We didn't find it. Trudy's GPS lied to us, we ended up stopping at the Blue Bay Diner in Queens: not great food, but the company was amazing.
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