Developers who want
to build thousands of homes atop a WWII-era bomb range in Orlando delay plans after public outcry.
Lisa Adinolfi stepped out of her house a few months ago and, whoosh, the front-door mat slipped under her foot. In a matter of seconds, Adinolfi broke an arm and tore a couple of ligaments in her legs.
“I got very badly hurt,” said the 54-year-old Mount Dora resident.
After being in the hospital, she was transported to a rehab center, “but I didn’t have the things that I needed to help me walk to leave rehab.”
Wheelchairs, walkers, shower seats — all the things that would give Adinolfi her independence cost money and weren’t completely covered by her health insurance.
“And then a friend told me about We Care We Share,” she recalled. “They gave me a walker and even a piece that went on the walker to hold my broken arm. I had everything I needed to be able to go home.”
We Care is not new to Lake County. The nonprofit has been helping uninsured residents get specialty care since 1994. The organization has a network of 100 specialists who volunteer their services for patients who couldn’t get care otherwise.
But its new program, We Care We Share, was formed just six months ago and is starting to grow.
Through the program, the agency rehabilitates medical equipment — wheelchairs, walkers, nebulizers, hospital beds — for people who need it.
“Yesterday, we got two wheelchairs donated and gave one away,” said Carol Millwater, We Care’s executive director, who implemented the program.
Only a few organizations in Florida and across the country have dedicated themselves to recycling medical equipment — and the Lake group is the only one in Central Florida.
“It’s a new concept that’s spreading,” said Owen O’Neill, founder and executive director of Clinics Can Help in Palm Beach County. “It increases access to medical care in a simple, cost-effective way.”
O’Neill started his nonprofit a decade ago. “It began as a hobby for me. I was a hospice nurse, and when everything was over, families wanted to donate their stuff.”
He now has five full-time employees and is moving to a 5,000-square-foot facility with a warehouse.
“High rates of people go back to the hospital because of lack of access to equipment,” he said. “Having medical equipment decreases your chance of readmission and injury and increases your rate of recovery.”
In Lake County, Millwater has big plans. She wants to extend her services to other counties and veterans in need. She’s moving We Care to a new building in Mount Dora with a 1,000-square-foot warehouse to store its growing inventory of medical equipment.
We Care gives equipment to anyone in need and encourages people to return the equipment once they’re done.
“It doesn’t matter what you got. When you’re in a situation like I was, when someone helps you, there’s no amount of money for something like that,” Adinolfi said.