Fund for the Needy
Seniors get helping hands

By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Santiago Credo, a Senior Services employee, this week installs handrails in a bathtub for Mary McCandlish, who is walking in the background. Mary, 87, will take care of her husband, Jim, 88, who is returning to their Seattle home from a stay in a nursing home after having a stroke.

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Mary wanted to call 911 but Jim said, "I'm all right, I'm fine." She managed to help her husband to a nearby sofa, where he slept the night.

"That's the way men are. I'll never listen to that again," she says.

The next morning, Jim, a retired truck mechanic, did get off the sofa, but Mary knew things weren't right.

"He couldn't remember anything. He didn't know what day it was." Mary called 911.

She was telling all this as Santiago Credo, better known as "Santy," one of the guys from Senior Services' Minor Home Repair Program, was installing grab bars in the bathtub and by the toilet.

Senior Services — which this year will serve more than 51,000 people in King County — is an agency that's a necessity, especially in these tough economic times. With programs ranging from Meals on Wheels to the home-repair service, it is among a dozen groups receiving support from The Seattle Times Fund For The Needy.

By this weekend, Jim is supposed to return home after his stroke, and Mary knows that taking care of her husband will be a lot of work. She said the nursing home where Jim has been staying was dubious about him leaving, what with his need for assistance to get around, but he wants to be back in familiar surroundings.

Besides the grab bars in the bathroom, Mary also wanted a lock installed on a closet door.

Senior Services The nonprofit organization this year in King County will help more than 51,000 people, three-quarters of them female and low income, with a variety of programs involving health, housing, caregiving and minor home repairs. For more information, www.seniorservices.org. How your generosity has helped Last year, donors gave more than $550,000 to The Seattle Times Fund For The Needy. Senior Services, which was given $120,000, is one of 12 agencies that received support from the fund. It used its portion to help Meals on Wheels, which will be written about in a future story, and an emergency fund. The agency has a budget of $13 million that covers 15 programs, nine senior centers and seven adult day health centers. Its Minor Home Repair Program illustrates the agency's philosophy.

On a previous visit, Santy fixed a basement light that didn't work. Santy, 52, thinks of his parents when dealing with the mostly elderly, female and low-income people in whose homes he does repairs. He always has a smile and a friendly comment.

Finishing the work, Santy told Mary how much the bill would be — $51 for "materials at cost," and $25 for labor at $10 an hour, for a total of $76. Although Mary said she'd write a check on the spot, Santy said, no, no, she'd get the bill in the mail.

If clients can't pay the entire bill, they can make no-interest payments. Sometimes a payment might be only $5 a month.

If she had called a commercial carpenter or plumber, Mary knew, the cost would be much more. Rates could be $60 to $90 an hour, or perhaps it'd cost $50 just to have someone come and make a bid.

"Afford that? I doubt it," she said. The McClandishes live on $1,100 a month. They have savings, but this week Mary was looking at a bill of several thousand dollars for Jim's nursing-home stay, and pondering whether to sell their home to pay for many more inevitable costs.

2,400 jobs each year

Each weekday morning at 8, Santy and six other repairmen meet with Bill Rhoades, their field supervisor, in a large warehouse on South Spokane Street where they park their repair vans, and also where the Meals on Wheels vans are loaded. They go over their job assignments, some 2,400 of them annually.

This past week, Santy also drove to the Rainier Valley home where Dorothy Sims, 75, has lived for three and a half decades and raised seven children.

She and her husband divorced in 1996, and Sims took out a mortgage to pay off his share. That costs $300 a month, she said, a sizeable chunk of her monthly $744 Social Security and pension checks. She worked for 20 years as a nurse's aide, retiring because of rheumatoid arthritis. Her doctor told her about Senior Services' home-repair service.

This time, because her bathroom and basement laundry-tub faucets were leaking, she had shut off the water to them, and had been pouring water into a pan to wash herself. She doesn't want to burden her children with things like faucet repairs.

"They have their children ... ," Sims said. "I depend on the home repairman."

It took Santy an hour to fix the faucets, which included grinding them so the new rubber washers he put in had a good seal. "They're old faucets, but they're still good," he reassured Sims. "We charge you $12, including labor."

Sims smiled and said, "Amen, amen." A few months ago, the Senior Services repairman had replaced a leaky drainpipe, at a cost of about $110. Sims still owes $60 and called the agency, worried about the debt.

"They were very reasonable with me," she said, when she explained she also was juggling an unpaid light bill.

Santy came from Guam to Seattle five years ago with his wife and three kids, wanting them to live in a nice town with good schools. In Guam he was a longtime maintenance worker, and had picked up handyman skills. His two daughters are studying to be nurses. His son has just returned from an Army tour as an Apache helicopter mechanic in Iraq.

Santy doesn't mind commiserating a little bit about family life, just as Sims enjoys talking about the more than 200 photos of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren on her living- and dining-room walls.

Once again, Sims thanked Santy as he finished up the paperwork.

She said, "They make you feel like you're somebody. It's important to have that respect."

For Santy, it would soon be time to visit another home of someone who got old and was looking at an empty savings account.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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