Giving Back The Best I Can
Lisa put in 250 hours of sweat equity as the down payment on her home.
For the past 13 years, Lisa, a Habitat for Humanity of Kenosha County homeowner, has worked as a medical assistant at a local doctor’s office. Her job had been fairly routine, but all that changed on March 10th of 2020.
Just a few days earlier, the staff had a meeting to talk about a new virus that had begun to appear in other parts of the world, and most recently, parts of the U.S. Not much was known about COVID-19, nor were there well established protocols for how clinics and hospitals should prepare for possible COVID patients.
On March 10th, Lisa and three other staff discovered that they had interacted with a patient suspected to be infected with the virus. She and her co-workers were frightened and concerned for the well-being of their patients, their own health and the safety of their families. Lisa immediately began to advocate for increased safety protocols in their offices, but getting sufficient Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) and appropriate policies and procedures to protect their patients and staff was a struggle.
As the virus became more widespread throughout the country schools and businesses were shut down, the doctor’s office eventually got the PPE they needed and increased sanitation procedures were put in place. But unfortunately, one day in late March, Lisa began to have a fever that slowly increased throughout the day and she was sent home for a 14 day quarantine. In the early days of the pandemic, testing was difficult to access and so was information on how to safely quarantine with family members in the house. As a single mom with two kids, one of whom has severe asthma and allergies, she was terrified that she would pass the virus on to her children. She spent the next 14 days confined to her bedroom while her daughter brought her meals.
“Family celebrates completion of their new Habitat home.”
Lisa still doesn’t know for certain if she had COVID-19, but the experience motivated her to focus on finishing the work for the nursing degree she’d been working on with evening classes for nearly a decade. In fact, she recently volunteered over 40 hours at a local hospital doing COVID screening, including her nursing school graduation day. Lisa explained, “I spent the day I was supposed to graduate nursing school as a nurse giving back in the best way I could.”
As she continues her job search as a registered nurse during these difficult and challenging times, Lisa is thankful for her Habitat home that she’s fitted with HEPA filters and other improvements to help her son’s asthma and allergies. “I can truly not imagine where I would be if Habitat did not come along. I have something that I am slowly turning more and more into my own, something to be proud of!”
"Lisa is a very hard working single mother,” says Joyce Pavlina from Kenosha Habitat. “She knows what she wants and she goes after it. To get a Habitat home, a person has to put in 250 sweat equity hours. Lisa put in her sweat equity hours, went to school, worked part time and took care of her two children. This is quite an accomplishment for anyone."
Congratulations on your graduation, Lisa, and thank you for your commitment to serving to your community!
Lisa and her two children received the keys to their new home during the home dedication ceremony.