By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
ST. JOSEPH – There’s no place like home. Like Dorothy in the classic “Wizard of Oz”, Stevensville resident Shannon O’Brien knows about the importance of home. She was in danger of losing her home after bills piled up after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In her case, her fairy godmother turned out to be the contributors to the Hopeful Home Fund set up last year by the United Way of Southwest Michigan in partnership with the office of Berrien County Treasurer Bret Witkowski.
O’Brien is the fund’s first recipient. Witkowski said she and her teenage triplet daughters were the first to get help from the Hopeful Home Fund to pay off the back property taxes she owed to save her home from foreclosure while she battled breast cancer.
Witkowski sait that it’s people like O’Brien that he and the United
Way want to help. “She had breast cancer that had spread to bones and it did not look good for her, but now she is back working,” he said. “She was on a payment plan and said she had to put things in order. So that is why she was picked.”
As O’Brien continues to battle cancer, she was back in the hospital just last week, she has expressed her gratitude to the fund.
“There are no words to express the depth of my gratitude to the generous donors to the Hopeful Home Fund,” she said. “The gift my family received lifted the burden of worrying about losing my home and allowed me to focus on fighting my breast cancer.”
O’Brien expressed similar sentiments to those who contributed to a Go Fund Me campaign set up earlier this year to raise money to help offset the costs of her cancer treatments.
“I am so overwhelmed by the generosity and compassion of each and every person who has donated here to help me,” she wrote. “There are no words to express my deep gratitude but I intend to thank each and every person individually.”
“I want everyone to know it means everything to me that so many people care and it has given me so much strength and courage to keep pushing and one day I will be the one helping someone else,” she added.
As the Go Fund Me page noted, O’Brien discovered a lump on her breast during a business trip in November 2018 and was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Doctors found that it had metastasized beyond her breast to surrounding lymph nodes.
In the spring, the Go Fund Me organizer reported that she was undergoing chemotherapy treatments which would be followed by radiation and a full mastectomy.
While every situation is unique, Witkowski noted in the spring that the Hopeful Home Fund was set up for situations like hers where people need a helping hand to get caught up with their bills. She has a total of five children and has continued to work throughout her illness.
Witkowski said last week that 1,446 properties in the county were in danger of getting foreclosed on, with 719 of them on a payment plan. He said the number of foreclosed properties is 4.3 percent less than last year at this time, while the number of people on payment plans is 21.45 percent higher.
It was publicity about another woman in need that got him thinking about setting up the Hopeful Home Fund.
Mildred Gray was an elderly woman who lived in Niles and walked each month to the South County Building to meet Witkowski and make an installment payment. When people heard about her situation, anonymous donors came forward and paid off her debt.
Witkowski and United Way President Anna Murphy said they’re not setting a limit or putting up a goal of how much money they want to raise. “I don’t want to put a limit to the kindness of the residents of Berrien County,” he said. “The more we can help the better.”
“It is my hope that the great people of Berrien County will once again step up and donate to help a Berrien County family—who is behind on taxes due to circumstances beyond their control—to keep their home and avoid foreclosure,” he said.
Murphy said the United Way is acting as the fiduciary partner with the Berrien County Treasurer’s Office. “The county identifies people in need and the contributions come to us, they know who would be the best recipient,” she said. “People can donate any time during the year.”
She noted that the Hopeful Home Fund coordinates well with the work the United Way does to help people in need in conjunction with agencies like the Salvation Army. “It’s unfortunate when people fall into situations like this and need this kind of help,” she said.
People can visit the www.uwsm.org website to see what the United Way does to help people. As the website notes, 43 percent of Michigan households struggle to afford the basic necessities of life such as housing, child care, food, health care and transportation. 16.2 percent of households in Berrien and Cass Counties live below the poverty line.
All donations to the fund are tax deductible. Donations should be made to United Way Hopeful Home Fund and sent to United Way of Southwest Michigan, 2015 Lakeview Ave., St. Joseph, MI 49085.
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