Elderly Eustis woman needs our help.
When you think the motel where you temporarily are staying has poisoned your morning coffee, you may need some help.
When you eat only pickled beets warmed with cloves from a can, you may need some help.
When you are 94 and have no plan for where to live starting Christmas morning, you may need some help.
Juanita Fitzgerald, the fragile Eustis woman thrown out of her subsidized apartment last week — and then spent two days in the Lake County Jail on a trespassing charge, which was rightly dropped — absolutely needs some help from officialdom. But so far she isn’t getting any because she doesn’t fit all the right bureaucratic definitions.
The Kentucky native with an inbred distrust of all things government isn’t getting a hand from her two children, who have medical troubles of their own and aren’t local. A grandson is in prison, and Fitzgerald has told friends that she sends money every month to his commissary account so he can buy candy and personal items.
What about assistance from the state Department of Children & Families or LifeStream Behavioral Center, Lake’s nonprofit mental-health facility?
“We’re the ones she’s pushing away the most,” said B.E. Thompson, LifeStream’s director of development.
Caseworkers from DCF keep trying to assess Fitzgerald’s condition but she doesn’t want to be assessed, said Bill D’Aiuto, DCF’s regional director. At one point, she physically pushed an investigator out a door.
“She’s an adult,” D’Aiuto said, and she gets to make her own decisions if she has the mental capacity to do so. That’s a pretty big “if.” A kind soul who has a relative at Franklin House, the Eustis senior living facility from which Fitzgerald was evicted Dec. 12, was paying for her to stay in a motel through Christmas morning when she was taken to a local hospital Thursday after threatening to harm herself. Unfortunately, having a roof over her head — even for just a few days — means she’s not technically “homeless,” and the usual agencies can’t step in against her will.
Where this spunky lady will end up is unclear, but she may be taken to LifeStream for a mental-health exam in the course of the next few days.
Meanwhile, a woman trying to help Fitzgerald filed a police complaint against a guy who doesn’t even know Fitzgerald but who started a campaign to raise money for her. Will she get a nickel of the cash? No one knows. There’s other craziness, too — the phone rings continually and all sorts of folks were knocking on her door. It’s clear that the land sharks are swarming around this poor soul in her
10 unfortunate minutes of fame.
This must stop. Talk of how “sharp” Fitzgerald is for her age is complete babble. When an elderly person with an income of only $771 a month from Social Security and $50 a month in food stamps has no plan for where to live — other than off the kindness of strangers — then by definition, she is not “sharp.”
When she leaves her motel room and can’t find her way back, she’s not sharp. When she swears at other guests because they can’t direct her, that’s not sharp. When she uses that tried-and-true technique from 1960s protests of sliding to the ground and going limp to avoid being moved, that’s pretty doggone sharp — but it’s not real smart.
Fitzgerald was being charged only $171 a month at Franklin House — the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development covered the rest — when she decided not to sign her lease. The senior center wouldn’t accept her payment without it.
Fitzgerald failed to realize that most one-bedroom apartments in Lake County run upward of $500 a month, and even if she were mobile, she would have a nearly impossible time finding a place to live on her budget.
Does all this add up to someone who is able to make decisions in her own best interest? It does not.
Thompson said: “Here’s the sticking point: She still thinks she can live independently.”
Since all the hubbub started, Thompson said, it’s become clear that Fitzgerald needs more care than is offered at Franklin House. She may need to be in an assisted-living facility where, for example, residents are provided actual meals rather than a supply of pickled beet tins.
DCF and LifeStream must realize that Fitzgerald, who is physically fragile, has now become very vulnerable — the target of anybody, accessible to everybody. Even if authorities have to bend the rules, they must act to protect her and keep her safe before she gets really hurt.