A shoulder injury ten years ago made it difficult for Marilyn Foster to lift heavy loads above her head. Now that she's past eighty years old, lifting is that much tougher. Lifting garbage into the dumpster at her apartment complex proved especially problematic. 

“I couldn't lift the dumpster lid to put the garbage in, it practically made me cry with rage,” Foster recalls. Unable to put her garbage into the dumpster, it accumulated in her apartment.

After waiting too many times for one of the neighbors in her Medford apartment complex to happen along and help, Foster decided to do something about it. Foster's apartment complex is managed by the Housing Authority of Jackson County which receives its funding from HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development), so she figured they should be making some accommodation for those, like herself, who have difficulty lifting heavy objects.

She approached the on-site apartment manager and requested that an old-fashioned, waist-high garbage can be placed next to the large dumpster. When the manager refused to help, she elevated the issue in a different way.

“I called the County Commissioners' office and reached David Gilmour. He thought the quickest way to solve this problem would be for me to call Help Now!,” says Foster.

Commissioner Gilmour is intimately familiar with the work of Help Now!--he's been a member of the Help Now! Board of Directors for the past six years including serving as Board president for part of his tenure.

A call by Help Now! to the Housing Department's overseer of the complex yielded results within a week. All trash dumpsters suddenly had new waist-high trash cans beside them.

“Now the three or four others with disabilities in my complex are also using the separate garbage pails,” Foster adds.

The key, says Help Now! Executive Director Larry Kahn, was “reaching the right person within the bureaucracy—the decision-maker. In Marilyn's case, we also used the opportunity in speaking to this person to get Marilyn's stove fixed—two burners had been broken for a long time.”

“The elderly are often ignored in our society. This is an example of how one phone call can make a big difference,“ Kahn adds.

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