For a widow, an apartment; for a refugee, his family

Dec. 29, 2009

In daily articles that run from November to January, the Neediest Cases fund-raising campaign provides a window into the lives of the people it serves. Sometimes a small amount of money provided by the fund can avert a larger disaster; sometimes it can do little more than cushion the sharp edges of struggle. Occasionally, it can change lives.

Though it had been 20 years since Marie Hinkel, 80, had lived in White Plains, when she returned in February, it seemed as if she had never left.

“I can’t go on the street without running into someone I know,” she said one afternoon, sitting in her living room.

The move — to the one-bedroom apartment in a 12-story housing complex for older people — has other benefits, she said. A church close by serves free meals daily; her fellow tenants are friendly.

Many, like herself, are widowed, with little family and a love of cats. (She has two, Frisky, 17, and Muffy, 5.).

“There’s not one person here that I don’t like,” Mrs. Hinkel continued. “Even going to the mailbox, there’s always someone there, offering candies, chocolates, cookies — I don’t eat that stuff anymore because of my cholesterol,” she said, admitting that she sometimes cheats.

But it is the monthly rent, $665, that gives her the greatest satisfaction. “I can’t spend much money,” she said. Her Social Security benefits and the interest from money from the sale of her old apartment in Port Chester, N.Y., are her only income, she said.

Before the sale, she often worried about how she would feed herself and that she would be homeless. “If I wasn’t able to sell my apartment, I don’t know where I’d be,” she said.

Mrs. Hinkel’s predicament was featured in The New York Times in November 2008.

Her husband, Martin, had died at 78 in 2007. His declining health put her $15,000 in debt. Though she didn’t have a mortgage, she was struggling to keep up with her utilities and $752 in maintenance.

Selling her apartment seemed the only answer to her financial distress. But the building’s co-op board turned all the offers down, she said. “It took three or four months for them to go through the paperwork,” she said. “They’d say no and never told me why.”

As time passed, she became more worried.

She turned to a friend, Judy Fink, the director of geriatric services at the Westchester Jewish Community Services, a beneficiary of UJA-Federation of New York, which is one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. Ms. Fink helped Mrs. Hinkel apply for a reverse mortgage, which took eight months to process. Meanwhile, Ms. Fink relieved some of Mrs. Hinkel’s financial stress by pulling $550 from the Neediest Cases Fund to cover her maintenance charges.

Near the end of 2008, another offer — an all-cash deal for $100,000 — came in and was quickly approved, to Ms. Hinkel’s relief, for it allowed her to move to White Plains and into the senior housing complex.

“It saved my life,” Mrs. Hinkel said. “I love it here.”

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Waiting outside the international arrivals area at John F. Kennedy Airport one day in September 2009, Patrice Mbekeli couldn’t help being anxious. His wife and four children were joining him in New York. He had not seen them since he fled Cameroon in 2007 to escape years of persecution for refusing to support the government.

The reunion was never assured, and at times seemed elusive, said Mr. Mbekeli, interviewed recently by phone from Texas, where he lives now.

After arriving in America, he faced hardship before and after being granted political asylum, including unemployment and homelessness.

In June 2008, he contacted Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, which was among a list of agencies he was given with his political asylum papers. “I was a mathematics teacher for Catholic schools in Cameroon,” he said, explaining why he chose to call.

Catholic Charities helped him enroll in English classes and a training course to become a home health aide, to apply for food stamps and Medicaid and to find housing. Catholic Charities, one of the seven agencies supported by the Neediest Cases Fund, also drew $490 from the fund to pay off part of the $1,390 he owed his immigration lawyer for securing documents necessary for his family to join him in America.

After the details of Mr. Mbekeli’s struggle were written about in The New York Times last year, a reader, Wallace Cooke Jr., a former New York City police officer and a real estate investor, asked Catholic Charities to arrange a meeting with Mr. Mbekeli.

“I knew I wanted to offer him a job right on the spot,” said Mr. Cooke, interviewed recently by phone.

Mr. Mbekeli accepted the job, to maintain a 114-unit residential property that Mr. Cooke had recently bought in Odessa, Tex. The offer included a plane ticket and housing.

“It took him some time to get adjusted,” Mr. Cooke said. “But he has done very well.”

While Mr. Mbekeli learned skills like plumbing and landscaping during the day, at night he found a second job at Wal-Mart. Within months, Mr. Mbekeli was able to save $7,000 — enough to pay for his family’s travel in September, after their visas were approved.

“We just fell in the arms of each other,” said Mr. Mbekeli, describing their reunion. For a few moments they could hardly speak; then the emotional silence erupted into laughter, he said. Ms. Mbekeli picked up their 2-year-old, Camerica, conceived two months before Mr. Mbekeli left Cameroon, and placed her in his arms.

“It was like it was in my dreams every night,” he said. “It was joyous.”