Wow, I don't know how to properly thank Slash and everyone who donated for John William's service dog. Thank you all soooo much. There are no words I could type here to accurately project my gratitude for your kindnesses. I have learned something.... about the kindness of strangers.
We all go through tough times so I was hesitant to reach out with my hat in hand but I admit that I have no pride when it comes to keeping my kids safe. I spoke to a good friend on another web site about our situation and he immediately offered to post a banner there, with Slash so considerately following up here in the AH forum. I am embarrassed by my situation.. a little ashamed to be so public with my problems. It has been a very difficult 12 months.
Someone asked if I sold my 10 second car... alluding to that I should sell any assets I could to take care of my own problems. I agree 100% with this, actually. I would have sold a kidney if it was legal.(it's not in the US)
So below is some back story, cut and pasted from another forum. In an effort to put the post into context: I posted it originally to a person named Beet1e(on the other forum) who was celebrating my misfortune and also mentioned selling my own stuff.
Thank you all again for your selfless generosity.
Steve
The first of this year, our insurance changed and much of John Williams habilitation is no longer covered by insurance... well now comes with a large annual deductible that we have since exceeded(thus paid for). The bottom line is that to date we have paid just over $18k in out of pocket expenses for John's habilitation this year.
On April first, I lost my largest client when they switched administrators. This was the State of Arizona Medicaid. The new administrating company(Total Transit) for the program has their own taxis and wheelchair vans and has little use for anyone else. While I could have survived this by downsizing, shortly after this my nephew finished off the company. I handled admin from my home in Wisconsin and he ran the boots on the ground in AZ. He decided he wasn't making enough money so over the course of a little over a month he bilked me out of several thousand dollars. One thing he did was he would sell tanks of gas on the company gas cards... you put 75 bucks worth of gas in your tank on the card and you pay him 50 bucks cash. This was hard to figure out, took me about 6 weeks and a helpful QT manager. He also took a cancelled check, and ordered some company checks, forged my signature and helped himself. The final straw was that he pissed off my second biggest client, and longest tenured,(12 years) so they cancelled their contract as well.
My company is a one person LLC. I only had one creditor(that I owed), and that was the finance company for the vans. I had to stay in good graces with them so I needed to pay off the vans. I couldn't let any repossessions show up on my credit. The reason I had to keep in their good graces is because I must start my business anew up here in Wisconsin. I have to do this because decent paying jobs up here are next to non-existent. Stacy(wife) has a good job but I do not know how much longer she can work because she was diagnosed with young onset Parkinson's disease last year. She may only be able to work a few months or maybe 20 years, but with 4 young children in the house, I must have a way to feed them in place.
So we had a garage sale.. three actually as we took stuff to friend's garage sales in subsequent weeks. I sold all my camping gear, dress clothes, my grandmothers china, extra set of tires/rims, all the kids clothes we could spare, most of my ammo( the unopened stuff), all the extra tools I could spare including all my floor jacks, jack stands, air tools and compressor, all the sports memorabilia I had, all our good furniture, books, laptop etc.. anything we thought we could live without.
I put my car up for sale and had 3 serious inquiries. This was more than I expected as the car is really built for drag racing/driving and there isn't a drag strip within around 200 miles of here(remember, I used to live in AZ). Also, it has no heat, and no A/C. Finally, it has no roof. I had the targa top on a shelf in the garage, out of reach of 7 year old hands. This spring, John had escaped and was out of sight. In a panic I yanked my bicycle off the wall and knocked the targa top off the shelf...shattering one corner of it. It costs about $900.00 to replace so I haven't done so.
Of the 3 inquiries on the car, the first one was an older guy who test drove it and loved it but said he had too hard a time getting in and out of such a low car. The second was an older guy too. He test drove the car but came back after only a few minutes. During the test drive, per his account, he rested his foot on the gas pedal as he turned onto the on-ramp of US highway 51. This little pressure from his foot was enough of a throttle blip to cause him to lose the car in the turn and spin it. He felt the car was too dangerous. The third guy was a kid really, just out of the marines. He actually drove it then said he'd be back with the cash. He showed up an hour later, cash in hand. He had his mother bring him so he could take the car home. When his mother got out of the car I could just about see the blood drain out of her face. She asked a couple questions about the car then begged her son not to buy it; that he'd be dead in a week if he did. I got the impression she felt he was somehow mentally slow... Any way, he then lowered his offering price, even though we had agreed to a price already. As I spoke with him, I could see his mother watching me, pleading with her eyes for me to not sell him the car(at least that's what I got out of it). So I turned his offer down. Fortunately for me, I have a good friend who is a district manager for Associated Bank and he helped me secure a loan with my car and boat as collateral which I then used to pay off the remaining van loans. At least the interest rate and the payment are way lower. So I was able to fight off repossession.
Between the garage sales and new loan I paid off the vans but also had enough cash to order fence for the yard. John couldn't go out and play unless he had an escort due to his penchant to elope so often he was stuck in the house. So I am building a fence for the yard. I can't build a cheapo chain link fence as he would figure out how to climb that in a heartbeat.
We were in the process of buying a house with the 3.5 car garage Beetle mentioned. We couldn't get financing for two reasons. one: it is pretty hard for a self employed person to get a home loan. Two: Stacy made enough money to qualify on her income alone but since we had moved twice and she had changed employers, she could not qualify for a couple of years. Some lenders even considered her promotion,upon completion of her Master's, from nurse to nurse practitioner to be a change of profession. So we were buying the house from the owner on a land contract. This is fairly common in Wisconsin although I'd never heard of it in AZ. Basically, you put a big chunk as a down payment and the owner agrees to carry the note for a period of time until you can qualify on your own. We put 20% down and agreed to a 5 year land contract, although we felt we only needed 2 years at most. Well the owner promptly defaulted on the mortgage... almost immediately. A little over a year and a half later, with the bank on the verge of repossessing the property, we moved. We haven't received a dime of our money back from the owner.
In the mean time, when John had run, he would always run to neighbor's houses, and go inside. Sometimes he would run inside, sit down on the couch, and start watching TV(cute but no less terrifying while he was missing). Because of this we were already looking into getting him a guide dog. But this last time he ran(his brother let him out), he went straight to the river and was found a half mile upstream. He was wading in the river within 50 yards of a dam. This added a big sense of urgency to get him a guide dog. In desperation, we started a fund raiser.. bake sales etc to secure a dog as quickly as we could. Of the kids with autism, 91% who die accidentally die from drowning...water is really cool to a kid with autism and they have no sense of danger.. none. I discarded what little pride I had left and begged for help. That's right, I am calling it begging. Among other things I called Nuke and asked for his help. So to Beetle and his ilk, enjoy my suffering and misfortune as is your way. Taunt me, belittle me, I don't care. I just want my son to be safe.
