Person-to-person generosity:
A GoFundMe campaign by strangers helps a Milwaukee woman with two young children buy a used car so she can get to and from work.
Charitable giving typically allows us to help unspecified people cope with unseen problems.
And then there’s the kind of person-to-person generosity that is lifting up one hard-working single mom in Milwaukee. This story begins in the predawn hours of a snowy March Monday. Uber driver Dave Begel received an alert to pick up a woman named Marticia on N. 24th Place in the central city. He would be making two stops, the phone app said.
The woman came out of the duplex with two children, including a baby in a car seat. The first stop was a day care center where the woman dropped off the kids and returned to the car.
The second stop was a Taco Bell across town in Oak Creek where the woman works. She told Dave that she uses Uber every day, despite the $20 cost each way. Then she leaned her head against the car window and fell asleep.
“She woke up, opened the door, gave a ‘Thank you,’ and walked through the snow to the door. There she stood, obviously waiting for someone to come and let her into the restaurant that was as dark as the night,” Begel wrote in a column appearing on OnMilwaukee.com.
Many of us take transportation and other comforts of middle-class life for granted. Dave said he cried as he considered this woman waking up her kids at 4:30 in the morning and then making her way to a fast-food job where more than half her pay would go for the rides there and back.
Among the people who read his column was Kelly Evans-Pfeifer, daughter of Dave’s longtime friend Terry Evans, a federal appellate judge who died in 2011.
Kelly works in advertising in San Francisco. She sent Dave a Facebook message saying she kept thinking about this woman.
“I almost want to start a GoFundMe to raise money for her to get her own car. I bet I could get a lot of people at work to kick in $. Do you have her info from the Uber app? Could we even connect with her to help?” she wrote.
Dave called the Taco Bell and told the manager he wanted to speak to Marticia and hoped to give her a car. The manager talked about what a hard worker Marticia is, and she urged her to return Dave’s call.
“I was like, oh, this is a scam,” replied Marticia, whose last name is Jenkins. But then Dave told her about the crowdfunding plan and how the money would buy her a used car, insurance, registration, car seats and even a steering wheel Club for security.
“So actually it is real. I’m super excited,” Marticia, 26, told me.
Kelly set up the GoFundMe page with a goal of $4,000. She and others spread the word on social media.
“We posted on Saturday afternoon and by Monday end of day we had just about $4,000 raised,” she said.
Going into this weekend the amount is nearly $5,000 donated by 102 people, and the Wheels for Marticia fund remains open for anyone else who wants to help her out.
I drove her and the kids — Logan, 4, and Olivianna, almost 1 — to see the car Friday. It’s a 2004 purplish Scion hatchback that Dave’s neighbor, RoseMary Oliveira, was planning to sell for $2,500. When she heard Marticia’s story, she lowered the price to $2,000.
There are a few hurdles to jump yet. Marticia will need to renew her driver’s license. And Arcade Drivers School has said it will donate a couple lessons to teach her to operate a stick shift.
For now, Marticia plans to remain working at Taco Bell. She is at the Oak Creek location because she formerly lived with a friend nearby after spending a few months in a homeless shelter last year. Later she moved in with a cousin on the north side. She tried taking public transportation, but after waiting on cold corners with the kids for a bus that always seemed to be off schedule, she switched to Uber.
Marticia plans to move into her own place near 28th and Wisconsin on April 1, but money is tight for her. Her solution: She said she simply will have to work more, though she’s already putting in 40 hours most weeks at $8.50 an hour, often starting at 6 a.m. Looking down the road, she hopes to become a nursing assistant or a nurse. “I have to budget,” she said. And 100 compassionate strangers just made that a little easier for her.