SeniorLAWCenter in action/homecaregiverstore.com

Carol Guess was feeling totally overwhelmed.

She had lost her mother, the person who had been helping Guess with mortgage payments on her home in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. After raising five children of relatives, she was left the sole caregiver for a great-nephew with cerebral palsy. And it felt as if the wolf never lost the scent of Guess and her loved ones.

“They were threatening me with foreclosure because I couldn’t keep up the payments on the house,” recalls Guess of that terrible time back in 2009 when everything seemed hopeless.

SeniorLAWCenter

By the time a friend had steered her to the SeniorLAWCenter, Guess had lost much of her native optimism. But at that Center, she had her faith, hope and equilibrium restored – and that wolf was chased away, too.

Founded in 1978 by the city’s Bar Association, the Philadelphia-based organization is deeply committed to protecting the legal rights and interests of the elderly – defined as anyone over 60 – free of charge. Information and referrals also are provided, and there is ongoing cooperation with other legal, social service and aging-concerned organizations and partners. Seniors can even come to the organization to insure that they will receive all the government benefits to which they are entitled.

But most of all, the Center focuses on major areas of distress for seniors, from elder abuse, housing, domestic violence and financial exploitation to consumer protection, family law, and personal planning. During its over three decades of existence, the Center has provided free legal representation to over 50,000 seniors.

For Carol Guess, now 69, the SeniorLAW Center, staffed by qualified lawyers and a caring administrative team, was a lifeline in a sea of distress.

“I was fearful that I’d be living on the streets, and I had no idea what would happen to my great-nephew,” recalls Guess of her threatened foreclosure experience.

Assigned to her own attorney, this beleaguered woman was led out of the maze of mysterious legal papers through the efforts of SeniorLAW Center attorney Elizabeth Shay as her guardian angel. “I really think of her that way – she saved us,” says Guess.

With Shay’s legal expertise, gained during her ten-year career in public interest law when she actually represented displaced Hurricane Katrina survivors, Guess saw her mortgage payments drastically modified – they were actually cut in half for five years – so that this compassionate great-aunt could stabilize her finances.

Guess, who has traveled the world doing missionary work, no longer wonders “What now?”

Flowers As a "Thank You"

“Now I have a present and a future,” says Carol Guess. “And when I wanted to get Elizabeth Shay candy or flowers as a thank you, she wouldn’t take them. She told me she was just doing her job. I let her know that she was my best friend in the world…”

For the elderly, life can be daunting because of multiple renunciations: declining health, challenged economic status and isolation are unfortunate “companions” of older Americans.

And facing up to the complexities of the legal system can add yet another burden. The SeniorLAW Center recognizes that the true heroes and heroines among us are the grandmothers, the older veterans and the elders who have given so much to the generations that followed them. Thus the organization’s deep commitment to that very deserving population, especially when its members feel alone and powerless.

Part of a Major Swindle

That’s precisely what was also happening to Carlo Gambeta when he was part of a major swindle that involved the illegal sale of properties to unsuspecting, often elderly buyers.

When Gambeta, a retired city worker, found himself caught in a legal boondoggle, he was justifiably enraged. “I’d worked all my life, and now I was about to lose my home because of some thief and his crooked business practices . . . I never thought this could happen to me.”

At the SeniorLAW Center in Philadelphia, Gambeta was assigned to attorney Brian Krase, a former private practitioner who had left that lucrative professional life to work with older people in need. It was a match made in heaven.

“I wanted to be where people needed help and got it,” says Krase. “I wanted to feel good at the end of the day, and through this work, I do.”

“Brian kept me in my house. He’s helped me more than anyone in the world,” insists Gambeta, a 73-year-old widower who now says that he and others on his street feel safe in their home ownership again. “I’m an old Marine, and I know what it is to be strong. And lucky for the rest of us, Brian Krase is strong!”

For information about the SeniorLAW Center, phone 215-988-1244 or visit www.seniorlawcenter.org.