He’s a National Guard combat vet who has done three tours of duty over the past several years. It was only this past December when he actually returned to his young family from Iraq. With a job, a wife, a three year-old and a new baby on the way things were going smoothly. Until – premature labor set in and his wife delivered the infant seven weeks prematurely. With underdeveloped lungs, the baby was quickly put on a ventilator and transferred to a specialized hospital almost two hours away. What was once a stable home situation has now been turned upside down. Unable to work with the time spent traveling back and forth to the hospital each day and the stress of having such a sick child presents immediate financial challenges to this young family. The soldier’s employer will grant him Family Leave but there is bureaucracy involved and the paychecks are not yet here. What do you do when you have nowhere to turn? Without the car insurance premium paid there will be no transportation to make the daily trip to the hospital and the gas and food bills are considerable.
When Randi Cairns from Home Front Hearts shared this story with us yesterday we wanted to help. Home Front Hearts is dedicated to helping the military family and raising awareness in local communities of the unique needs of the "weekend warrior". Though she received generous offers of gift cards for gas and food from others who heard the story, the family was still faced with a car insurance premium that needed to be paid. The Good People Fund has just sent off the premium with the hope that the baby will thrive and the family gets back on its feet once again.
