Great news!. We have finally succeeded in finding a caregiver to work weekends. I had been using a referral agency but that failed to yield results. Following a helpful suggestion received online, I posted a job description at a local nursing school. I got a call within a couple days and interviewed someone soon after. Cora met her on Sunday and like her. Today she watched Marguerite care for Cora. She starts work this Saturday.

To make the job more attractive and to help Cora, we advertised that the job is two 7 hour shifts Saturday and Sunday. However Social Services will only pay for 5 hours each of those days. In addition, the hourly rate is not that attractive. Given the large positive response from the online community supporting the idea of contributing money to supplement Cora's care, we are going forward with the idea of setting up a fund to pay for the additional hours and provide a little extra toward the hourly rate for both workers.

To get started on the fund-raising, a paypal account has been set up for online donations. The account name is corafund@yahoo.com.

Please donate whatever amount you are comfortable with. Some have suggested $10-15 per month which is fine if enough people sign on. A monthly commitment is preferred so that we can continue to provide Cora with the extra hours of care on the weekend.

This account will accept funds from credit cards, paypal funds or checking accounts. However to avoid fees it is best to avoid the credit card transaction. Since there is no "donations" category in paypal, my only suggestion is to select "services" instead of goods or eBay auction items. Our plan for the fund is to use a nonprofit status so that donors will receive a tax deduction. However, we need more time to set that up so for now we have no way of providing a tax deductible receipt. I will update the community once the nonprofit fund has been set up. We will likely set up donation buttons at Feri websites as well. Let me know if you are willing to create such a link on your webpage.

If you would prefer to send a check, please make it out to Victor Anderson and send to Cora at 1529 153rd Ave, San Leandro, CA, 94578. Just include a note that it is for the CoraFund.

Cora would like to personally thank donors, so when you make a donation please include your mailing address. Cora will be sending a personal thank you card. In addition, I am setting up an online community to post updates on Cora's health and the fund-raising efforts, as well as create a forum for sharing Cora's wisdom and stories about both Victor and Cora. If you have visited Cora recently or in the past and would like to share stories from your visit please post them to this Live Journal community: community.livejournal.com/victor_cora/
I will also post updates to Tribe.

Thank you,

Onyx (Steve)