For Jane Tapia, life has brought one trouble after another. Her daughter was fatally shot. Her son suffered a brain injury that forces him to use a wheelchair. The grandchildren she’s raising have pressing needs she must meet.
Then, Tapia’s vision started to fail, and she couldn’t afford eyeglasses.
So the Denver Health Foundation’s charity gift of $49.95 for a pair of wire-frame bifocals was a blessing, said Tapia, 55.
“I was taking a chance driving without them,” she said. “Now I don’t have to worry about wrecking with my son.”
Tapia’s troubles began to accelerate in 2005, when her daughter, Desiree Fontes, a mother of two, was killed by an ex-boyfriend in a murder-suicide outside Denver’s College View Recreation Center. Three years later, Tapia’s son Francisco, a Safeway meat wrapper, collapsed as he was leaving for work, bleeding from his brain.
He had opted out of Safeway’s health coverage plan, wanting to save his $5 weekly share of the cost. Now, the family relies on Medicaid to cover Francisco’s medical expenses.
They also rely on his Social Security check of $917 per month. That money moves them within $8 of paying monthly rent on a red-brick duplex in Lakewood. For food, Tapia relies on food stamps.
A Denver native, she left her job at King Soopers to care for 36-year-old Francisco full time, monitoring his blood pressure and using a $59.95 pulse oxygen monitor that also was funded by the Denver Health Foundation’s Patient Assistance Fund.
Francisco’s brain injury left him with almost no mobility. He needs help to shower and dress and with almost every other task. He can eat only pureed food. Tapia said she’s worried because he doesn’t eat much of that, perhaps because he is ashamed, thinking ahead to the help he will need in the bathroom.
Physical therapists visit twice a week to help him recover motor skills. Social workers have told Tapia she might want to consider specialized care in an outside facility.
“I would never do that. He is my son,” she said. “I’m sure he’d do the same for me.”
She thinks he’s getting better. His former supervisors at Safeway assured her, she said, that if he recovers to the point that he can work, he will still have a job.
“We have every faith in God that he will get better,” she said.
She’s also trying to help her 19-year-old granddaughter, Maria, who dropped out of school after 10th grade. Maria avidly writes poetry, reflecting on the murder of her mother. (“At first I didn’t know how to feel; To see her in a coffin wasn’t real “) They’re looking for options such as the Emily Griffith Opportunity School, though Tapia increasingly needs Maria’s help at home.
Each day, little things they can’t afford gnaw: Replacing the bad battery in her silver sedan so that she no longer needs to ask neighbors for jump-starts. Toothaches that require dental attention. Affording lumber for a wheelchair ramp a neighbor offered to help build.
Tapia said she often feels depressed. “Anybody would be,” she said. “My daughter got shot.”
She focuses on the condition of her son.
“We will take care of each other,” she said. “It just comes naturally with love.”
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
