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Please Help Us Help Our
Children!
We are the Rich family, John, Nicole, Katie and Drake. Trust us when we say names can be deceiving. We couldn’t be further from rich. As parents of two very young children we are asking, no we are begging for help. John left his job over a year ago to move to Dallas, Texas. We made this decision based on many promises made by Nicole’s family. For a month we lived in Nicole’s brother’s one bedroom apartment with him. Nicole, Katie (then 22 months), Drake (then 3 months) and John lived in the living room of this apartment. Most promises fell through as John began to job hunt.
Within two weeks John went to work for a restaurant as a server. We could barely survive but we managed to get our own apartment. We could hear gunshots and screaming all hours of the day and night. We made the decision to return to Knoxville, where despite the fact that we can’t afford a large enough apartment, and we are forced to sleep in the floor of our living room, we are safe.
John now works at a new restaurant making $2.13 an hour plus tips, with health insurance being too much for us to afford. Our current income is under $200 a week. Drake (now 16 months) has only had two check-ups since birth. We have applied for state healthcare and food stamps but the state has lost our application and we are currently in the very lengthy process of re-applying.
We have no telephone or cable service, we watch videos with our children. Our one credit card is way over it’s limit and unusable, our medical bills (from two very difficult births) are covering us up, we even had to get a $1500 loan, which we are still trying to pay off, to make it back to Knoxville. Our car is on it’s last leg and we just hope it lasts until we can get our income tax refund. There have been nights that our family shared a can of peas for dinner.
We are not deadbeats, John has a huge amount of job experience, only with no luck at finding work. Nicole is studying to be a Bridal Consultant via correspondence, when we can manage to make a payment. John is an author with many stories written. He also has a collection of rejection letters but refuses to give up on being published. When John does become published and able to support his family we hope to begin a charity organization to help people in the situation we are currently in.
John has been held back from numerous employment promotions due to a dental disorder. John was born with no enamel on his teeth and so they are in a terrible state of decay. It would cost at least $5,000 to get dentures and all the bad teeth extracted. John would love to have this condition corrected prior to our children being old enough to understand there is something wrong with him.
We never imagined being in this situation but we are and we are asking for your help. Our family had no Christmas this year. We put a little candy in their stockings but nothing else. We cried the night our daughter asked us “Where’s the Christmas presents?” as we were unable to afford any.
As many people in our situation, we have tried a huge amount of “get rich schemes”. We have tried stuffing envelopes, selling Avon, Mary Kay cosmetics and countless internet plans. Over the past two months we have sold (via ebay and pawn shops) all but our children’s videos and all our CD’s. We are trying to sell our children’s old clothes to no avail. We have pawned our extra TV, VCR and our only stereo. We have no phone so job hunting is very hard to do.
Katie will be three on Jan. 22, it would mean so much to us to be able to give her a small gift and cake on that day. Our rent is already late this month and we are still $300 short paying it. Last month we received an eviction notice for being late, fortunately they gave us more time and we were able to stay.
Any help both emotional and/or monetary is greatly appreciated. Please click on the PayPal button(this will take you to the Paypal website, our email is jnkdrich@msn.com) to donate a monetary amount for our family or click the email link to get our address or to contact us for any reason.
Any donation of $50.00 or more will receive a poem written by John. It will be appropriate for framing. This may seem like a small return for your help but John’s poems are something that our family holds dear. All donations will receive a personal thank you and be listed (unless you prefer not to be) as a contributor to our children’s future.
Paypal will automatically subtract a fee of 2.2-2.9 % plus $.30 from each donation you make. Please see the links at the bottom of the page for more information.
Thank you all for joining us and taking time out of your day to read this, even if you can’t help financially. Just knowing there are people out there that care helps get us through the day.
Current list of generous contributors to our children's future