Couple's plight brings out 'the best of humanity'

There's a tribe out there that I didn't know existed. Until it gathered this week for a stranger named Joe.

Patty Pyle's in it. She's 73 and has stage 4 breast cancer. Her pills alone cost $144 a day. But since she's covered by Medicare, Joe, she's got your back.

Tanya Frerichs is in the tribe, too. Her husband's got stage 4 lung cancer. The "bills we receive are staggering," she says. Still, she's donated $1,100 to help Joe.

There's Heather Wechter, 62, visiting Seattle from Aurora, Ore. Lung cancer took her husband five years ago. "It's the most numbing experience imaginable," she says. "There's no way I can put into words what it's like to go through that.

"So, what can I do for Joe?"

On and on they came, into my voice mail and e-mail in-tray. Ginny Lee, of Seattle, who lost a son to cancer. Nina Meierding, of Bainbridge Island, whose son died of leukemia. Ellen Reichman, of Kirkland, who has breast cancer. They all came, for Joe.

Joe is Joe Lovett, a Des Moines man I featured in a column Sunday. His wife, Lien, has stage 4 lung cancer. The couple, deeply in debt, had returned home from a chemotherapy session last Thursday to find an order from Puget Sound Energy, saying pay up $369.46 within 24 hours or we'll cut your electricity off.

Even though that would shut down the infusion pump that aids his wife's failing kidneys.

And even though his wife's doctors had sent a letter to the utility warning that cutting power to the house could threaten her life.

"Reading about this made me so angry," says Pyle, of Edmonds. "All you go through with cancer, emotionally and financially, and then to have this happening over a silly electric bill? It's crazy."

Pyle was one of more than 100 readers who asked how they could help pay the electric bill. Many of them either have cancer or are caring for someone with cancer.

One man who lost his wife pledged $10. Another who said he had "cancer in the family" offered to pay the entire balance, then send a little more each month.

Another offered $1,000, writing: "I do not want my name published. This is just my way of paying back."

Joe's electric and gas bill is now covered, to put it mildly. Lovett said nearly $4,000 had been sent to Puget Sound Energy by noon Tuesday. To others who still want to help the family, I suggest you write to the Lovetts directly. You can contact me for their address.

For its part, Puget Sound Energy says it is not so heartless as portrayed in the column. The utility says it has 1,540 customers on home life support, and goes to great lengths to work with them if they have trouble paying.

"Customers have to speak to us early if they can't pay," said Vera Fuchs, who manages the life-support customers. "If you wait six, seven, nine months, it exhausts the ways we have to help you." Fuchs said she lost a spouse to cancer as well.

"I have a lot of empathy for Joe," she said. "I think he got overwhelmed, and I know from personal experience how that can happen."

OK, this story has a happy ending, so maybe I shouldn't push it further. But there's got to be a better way than posting a 24-hour shut-off threat on the door of a cancer patient on life support. Sharon Wallace of the state Utilities and Transportation Commission says the company is barred by law from turning off the power that quickly anyway. So not only was the threat cold, it was empty.

As for Joe, when I read him the messages, he cried.

"Man, total strangers, coming out of nowhere to help us," Lovett said. "It's the best of humanity. It's unbelievable."

You know what else it is? A bailout. Only not one of those top-down government or corporate ones we've been hearing so much about. This one's bottom up. Communal.

That first column fretted that we've become numbed by corporate or bureaucratic culture. I'd say the tribe answered that.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.