Coaching Through Crisis
(This article originally appeared in the Jersey Man Magazine)
by Andrea Hartley
Phil Martelli
What do St. Joseph’s basketball coach Phil Martelli, Cherry Hill attorney Dan Hartstein, pulmonary care specialist SandraWeibel, M.D., Lana Samuels, a disabled woman in Cape May County, and a man we know only as Thomas have in common?
People In Crisis. This non-profit organization was formed to help those who fall through the holes in our security nets by providing assistance with medical and living expenses. These are the people who ignited it and have helped it find its way. It started with two huge acts of kindness. When Lana was slowly dying, unable to pay for the medical care she needed following a serious accident, someone she barely knew stepped up and paid her medical bills. The man, who only will be identified as Thomas, had set aside what he hoped would be enough to cover his own substantial medical needs.
Instead, he gave his money to Lana. “He said, ‘I’ve been abandoned my whole life. If you think I’m going to leave you like this, I’m
not,” Lana said. She learned Thomas had been neglected and abused as a child and now as an adult was fighting diabetes, multiple chemical sensitivities, (a condition that leaves victims with an intolerance for everyday chemicals, producing severe, sometimes life-threatening symptoms), and infection in his jaw.
“The bottom line is this man, this kind man, spent every penny he had to save my life,” Lana said. “So I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to save his.”
Six days a week, without fail, Lana walks door-to-door soliciting donations through the purchase of discount tickets to local businesses
to pay for Thomas’ costly medical care and living expenses. These efforts have brought her in contact with many people experiencing tremendous unmet health needs.
In 2003, People In Crisis was born. Lana and Dr. Sandra Weible, who is Medical Director for Pulmonary Care at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, serve as co-presidents of the nonprofit.“We have been able to assist patients in multiple ways, including aiding financially for the payment of medications and helping them to obtain benefits and health care that they qualify to receive,” Dr. Weible said. “Unfortunately, despite our efforts, many patients are still unable to obtain all their medical needs.”
One of the doors that Lana knocked on was opened by Jack Kraft, the former Villanova basketball coach who led the Wildcats to six NCAA Tournaments. Kraft recalled that he said to Lana, “It would be the greatest blessing for me to help save these peoples’ lives that you are trying to help. These people are in severe crisis. I will open doors for you, because I had people open doors for me. My friends will help you.”
Fran Dunphy
That’s how Phil Martelli, who has led St. Joseph’s to six NCAA Basketball Tournaments in 16 seasons on Hawk Hill, came to be involved, and the same trail led to Fran Dunphy, Temple’s successful basketball coach and the first coach to lead two Big 5 basketball programs.
Dunphy told Lana that he would show up at events for People in Crisis, and he has.
Martelli, who helps raise funds for the effort, said, “I have a minimal role. Lana lives this. My definition of a hero is an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. That’s Lana.”
Hartstein agreed. He has been helping the organization with administrative duties since Lana walked into his office five years ago looking for donations. “Lana won me over, as she does most people. She is so genuine,” he said. “There is nothing worse than having a medical condition that needs treatment and not having appropriate medical coverage to be able to receive it, for yourself or your loved one.”
Hartstein said economic issues we face as a country are creating a greater need for organizations like People in Crisis, because funds are being cut and many families fall through the cracks. “We think of ourselves as a civilized nation. Are we? If you lived in another advanced nation, you would receive care for your illness. If you live in America, are we going to let you die, because you have no insurance or inadequate insurance?”
Another attorney who also has been assisting the organization in an advisory capacity is Anthony Balliet of Stone Harbor. Balliet secured a $30,000 grant in 2010 fromAstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. “I am proud to assist the organization, and it has been my pleasure to meet
Lana. She is like the Energizer bunny; she never quits.”
People in Crisis has helped many receive medication, obtain needed medical equipment and nursing care. Vince Pacentrilli, 62, of Absecon
said that Lana shopped for him and also helped him fill out forms for Medicare. “She’s a very persistent person,” he said. “She’s my guardian angel.”
Dr. Weibel described two persons with critical needs: “One has received a kidney transplant, but is struggling to meet his many other medical needs. The other has multiple medical problems and severe allergies requiring medical equipment and complicated dental care for his survival (that is) not covered by his insurance. We need to raise $100,000 for their medical survival.” Dr. Weibel says the goal of People In Crisis is to raise $2 million.
Despite the symptoms she experiences as a result of her injuries and the rudeness of some people, Lana keeps walking. As she walks for
her cause, she picks up friends and supporters along the way, and people to help. She hopes more people will walk with her.
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The nonprofit at Shore is huge act
of random kindness
Philly.com
Posted on Mon, Jul. 12, 2010
By Daniel Rubin
Inquirer Columnist
The front door of Busch’s seafood is locked, but that doesn’t keep Lana Samuels out.
She slips around to a side entrance of the Sea Isle City institution, hoping to catch owner Al Schettig off guard.
Schettig is walking through the empty dining room in his chef’s whites when he spots the humbly dressed woman.
He starts running for the kitchen.
“How are you doing this year?” Samuels calls after him, and he takes a couple of steps before freezing.
She begins her spiel in a gentle voice, full of facts and figures and urgency.
“People are hurting,” she says. “We need money to help them.”
There’s the Absecon man whom she helped get a kidney transplant, and now he isn’t doing so well, she tells him. The Cape May County woman with Tarlov cysts, another woman with an immune deficiency. The list goes on.
Schettig digs into his pocket. He hands her $50, says he wishes it were more. His restaurant is closing after the season.
“The reason I can’t run from you is that you have a spirit of dedication,” he says. “How can I say no to you? How can anyone? I call it ARK. You’re one big act of random kindness.”
Valerie Kirby, owner of Valerie’s Restaurant down Landis Avenue, couldn’t say no either – she was good for $20. Nor could the gray-haired woman renting the house a block from the ocean on 87th Street, who rubbed her hands as Samuels made her pitch, then handed her a five.
Neither could I.
Lana Samuels called several weeks ago about her tiny nonprofit called People in Crisis, which raises money to buy insurance and provide rides and rent for those who are ill and have fallen through the cracks. Too good to be true?
I did a little checking.
She has a way of getting good people to support her, which explains why serving on her board are Sandra Weibel, director of the pulmonary function lab at Thomas Jefferson University, and Temple neuroscientist George Tuszynski and his wife, Vicki Rothman, a medical researcher.
“I think some people are taken aback by Lana,” Weibel says, “but she truly wants to help people.”
Samuels and I had arranged to meet at one of her offices – a McDonald’s in Cape May Court House. Usually she travels everywhere by bus. She roped me in as her driver.
She’s on the phone when I arrive. She’s trying to reassure a man who is facing eviction that she’s collected enough money to buy him some time.
“It’s going to be OK,” she tells him. “You’ll have money to live.”
She turns to me. “This man is severely traumatized,” she says.
Samuels has bright blue eyes and long brown hair that’s gathered in a ponytail and tucked under a Rita’s ball cap the color of strawberry ice. She is 50, although she doesn’t measure her life that way – she lost too much time to her accident.
That accident is the driving force behind what she does, says the Rev. John Sosnowski, rector of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Stone Harbor.
Back in 1989 she was working two jobs – as a substitute teacher and selling Keebler cookies – when she slipped in the stockroom of a Rio Grande supermarket. Her neck snapped and she suffered a brain injury that still makes her thoughts sometimes spray like Silly String.
During the nearly two years it took for her to get disability payments, she couldn’t afford medicine or rent.
A friend stepped forward. He’d been working two jobs and saving money. He gave her about $60,000. She never forgot that kindness.
When he, himself, became sick – he developed a debilitating allergy to household items – Samuels started knocking on doors for help.
Seven years later, she’s still at it.
A typical day for her begins with a couple of hours of solicitations, then phone work, helping her clients cut through red tape – she’s become quite proficient at battling bureaucracy, Weibel says.
Often the door-knocking yields not just contributions but also clients. She’ll ask people if they need anything, and they might tell of a friend or relative.
That’s how she found Vince Pacentrilli, 62, the Absecon man whom she helped fill out forms to qualify for Medicaid, shopped for, visited by bus. “She’s a very persistent person,” he says. “She is my guardian angel.”
Until this year Samuels never had to detail her fund-raising to the IRS because she didn’t take in enough money. But in 2009 AstraZeneca donated $30,000. After paying for legal work and buying insurance for her nonprofit, Samuels was left with about $25,000. She gave it all to clients. She’s hoping for more corporate sponsors.
“It’s hard work going door to door and advocating for people,” Sosnowski says. “Just collecting money is challenging. She puts up with verbal abuse.”
“I’ve been swung at, kicked at, spit at,” Samuels says.
But not on Thursday.
The couple of hours I’m with her, she has a 100 percent success rate. “Tomorrow,” she says, “I won’t be so fortunate. You just look.”
When I let her off in Sea Isle, I realize I haven’t asked her if she has a husband or children.
“No,” she says with a smile. “I have nothing. I have no life.”
I beg to differ, but she waves me off, then trudges off, looking for more doors to try.
Daniel Rubin: More Information
Contact Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5917 or drubin@phillynews.com.
Find this article at:
http://www.philly.com
_________________________________________________________________
Cape May County woman using foundation to help others and pay back benefactor who saved her life
By ROB SPAHR, Staff Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com |
Saturday, December 31, 2011 12:30 am
Lana Samuels was slowly dying in a small room in Cape May County, unable to pay for the medicine she needed to sustain life following a serious accident, until a stranger came to her aid to get her the financial assistance she needed to survive.
When Samuels discovered that the man put himself in harm’s way to help her, she decided to spend the rest of her life trying to help the man, whom she refers to only as Thomas, by walking door to door to raise donations for him.
Along the way, Samuels’ mission has grown unexpectedly in terms of both volunteers and subjects.
“When I knock on people’s doors to see if they can donate to help Thomas, I also ask if they need any help,” said
Samuels, 61, of Ocean City. “And there are a lot of people who need help, so I want to help as many as I can.”
And even though Samuels said she is still well short of reaching her fundraising goal of $1 million to help the man
who saved her, the nonprofit organization she formed in 2003, People in Crisis, has already helped improve the lives
of dozens of local residents.
Samuels’ journey began when she slipped and hit her head while stocking cookie shelves in a Cape May County supermarket in 1990. The head and neck trauma she suffered resulted in her being bedridden and unable to pay for the medication she needed.
“I just know that I was dying in that room, because I needed a lot of medical resources that I couldn’t get. I was losing bits and pieces of my life,” said Samuels, whose memory is still foggy and who still deals with episodes of blackouts and tremors. “My friends and neighbors tried to fundraise for me, but we weren’t well known in the community, so it didn’t go well. And then this man walked in and saved my life.”
The man – whom Samuels refused to identify by anything more than his first name – had a large sum of money set aside for his own substantial medical needs. But, Samuels said, he used that money to help fund her recovery.
“He said, ‘I’ve been abandoned my whole life. If you think I’m going to leave you like this, I’m not,’” Samuels said.
When Samuels learned that Thomas had been neglected and abused most of his life, which contributed to his own health problems, she decided to return his kindness.
“The bottom line is this man, this kind man, spent every penny he had to save my life,” Samuels said. “So I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to save his.”
Six days a week, Samuels walks door to door soliciting donations – through the purchase of discount tickets to local businesses – to help pay for Thomas’s costly living and health care expenses.
These efforts led Samuels to people such as Somers Point resident Elaine Jones.
The 77-year-old has a slew of medical issues, including diabetes and arthritis, but could not afford the medication she needed to live comfortably.
People in Crisis got Jones the medicine she needed by contacting the drug manufacturer directly.
“It makes a big difference for me, because now I don’t have to worry about how I was going to pay for the medicine I needed,” said Elaine Jones, who was inspired to start volunteering for the organization. “If someone helps you, you want to help them. … And Lana helps a lot of people.”
People in Crisis has used this tactic – getting free medication from companies including AstraZeneca and Abbott – to help dozens of other local residents. And Samuels said she also helped another local woman suffering from multiple sclerosis get a wheelchair lift and nursing care, and secured a $20,000 grant for a Pleasantville family whose home was falling apart.
And then there are people such as Somers Point resident Gene Jones, whom People in Crisis helps to help themselves without necessarily raising money for them.
The roof to Jones’ Bala Drive home was badly damaged during Hurricane Irene, but the disabled former carpenter missed the deadline for federal disaster-aid assistance, and reimbursement through his homeowner’s insurance was stymied because the home was in foreclosure.
So the living conditions in Jones’ home worsen with every rainstorm, as buckets line his bowed floors and the walls in his kitchens can be seen crumbling where appliances once sat.
“I needed help but didn’t know where to get it,” said Gene Jones, 51. “Then Lana knocked on my door looking for donations for someone who had helped her. After we talked for a little bit, she offered to help me.”
Samuels immediately started getting Jones in contact with local, county, state and federal agencies that could help him, even having other volunteers from her organization call on his behalf. And while Jones’ roof is still not repaired, he is confident that it will be soon.
“Before this, I was lost,” Gene Jones said. “Now I have hope.”
Samuels refused to say how much money People in Crisis has raised since its inception or its average annual intake. But the organization’s 2009 990-EZ form on file with the IRS – which tracks revenue for nonprofit organizations -shows that the group brought in more than $40,000 in “contributions, gifts, grants and similar amounts.” Of this total, just more than $10,000 was spent during that year. Samuels and the organization’s co-president, Sandra Weibel, a pulmonary care doctor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, do not collect a salary, according to the document.
“I’m not a Mother Teresa,” she said. “But if I meet someone who needs help, I try to help them. And we have a long way to go until we have the $1 million we need to do that.”
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