USA: Forlorn Seniors Find Champions in Caring Neighbours, Strangers

BOYNTON BEACH (Palm Beach Post), November 1, 2005: Muriel Stanger spent much of the past week leaning on her walker behind her screen door, looking out from her dark apartment in Leisureville, waiting for something to happen — an ice or food delivery, the appearance of an electric company truck. For the past week, she has eaten cereal and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Ice didn't come until Monday, shortly after power returned to some buildings in the complex. The two events marked the end of a week in which the more than 3,000 residents at her retirement community fended almost entirely for themselves. Conditions are similar at Century Village in suburban Boca Raton, where an unauthorized posse of sympathetic neighbors arrived to help the residents. They went door to door and found people running out of medicine and food — some afraid to leave their homes, some unable to because they are connected to oxygen tanks. They spoke to a number of devout Jews who refused to eat non-kosher meals supplied to them by aid agencies. Such are the problems encountered at retirement communities, so many and so varied that they stretched the term "special needs" far beyond its limits. Those who have pitched in say recovery efforts are spotty, unpredictable and slow in arriving to residents who are still without power. Many residents of Century Village, Leisureville, Huntington Lake and Kings Point in Delray Beach are among the 107,000 in Palm Beach County who are older than 75. A good number are among the 35,000 older than 85. Those communities appear to have taken some of Wilma's hardest hits, said Bob McFalls, head of the Area Agency on Aging of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. "I come from Massachusetts and I've seen storms, but I've never seen a place crippled like this," said Stanger, who allows that she is in her 70s and cannot drive because of her glaucoma. It was a week in which the stronger residents took care of the weak. They carried ice in cooking pots, distributed cups of coffee made on an outdoor grill and built a barricade of severed tree limbs to keep confused or nearsighted neighbors from walking into downed power lines. The healthy drove the sick around the vast complex to the one working generator in Clubhouse 3 to power oxygen tanks and nebulizers. They also reserved ice for insulin supplies and looked for pharmacies to fill prescriptions. On Monday, a resident discovered they could dial 211 — the county's hot line — which, along with the Area Agency on Aging, is helping older residents find food, ice and water. The hot line has gotten roughly 6,000 calls since the storm, at least a third from elderly residents. In response, a staff of 50 has worked to get the basics — water, ice and "senior-friendly" meals — to retirement communities, McFalls said. While the priority remained food deliveries, the "senior-friendly" meals didn't work for everyone. "They are giving peanut butter and jelly to diabetics," said Richard Stransky, 79, an officer at the Whisper Walk community in suburban Boca Raton. "They cannot feed ham sandwiches to people here. People were crying. It's a shanda (shame)," said Sherry Fuchs, who lives west of Boca Raton. She has been at Century Village every day since Friday, ferrying several people to drugstores to refill prescriptions and to her home to eat kosher. David Rachimi, owner of Jerusalem Cuisine, a small restaurant and caterer on U.S. 441 in suburban Boca Raton, drove into Century Village and ordered his chef to cook up 100 chicken-and-vegetable meals for residents. Other heroes went nameless: People shared stories of the man who showed up with $1,500 worth of hot pizzas over the weekend and the man who drove from Sarasota with 36,000 bags of ice in his truck. State Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, had a Blackberry phone glued to his ear Monday, trying to line up diesel fuel, hot meals, ice and other provisions for his constituents, thousands of whom live in the sprawling retirement condo communities. At Huntington Lakes, Slosberg sprinted up a stairwell to help a woman with a walker who was trying to climb down a flight of stairs so she could stay with a friend in another town. "People are desperate. This should never have been allowed to happen," said Slosberg, who has been calling agencies, handing out ice and listening to stressed-out constituents who gathered around him everywhere he stopped. Conferring with a manager at Century Village, Slosberg found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had not yet visited, even though one or two buildings on the property had roof and structural damage. Overhead, rain clouds loomed and the forecast was for hot weather to return. Slosberg added to his to-do list to get visiting nurses into Century Village to aid residents with health problems. In the afternoon, he delivered ice door to door. "I'd offer you something to eat," one woman told him, "but all I have is bread." By Antigone Barton, Lona O'Connor, Palm Beach Staff Writers Staff writer William M. Hartnett contributed to this story.