http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/26/AR2009042602323.html

For Homebound Seniors, Project's Legal Help And a Caring Voice Are a Phone Call Away

By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 27, 2009

The young attorney in jeans and black sneakers calls for everyone's attention: "We are witnessing the last will and testament of John Fizer Jr.," she intones.

The retired bricklayer sits on the edge of his bed. His rubber-tipped metal cane rests between his legs. A plastic air tube attached to his nose snakes over his ears and back to a machine in the corner.

The television in his spartan room is on with the volume turned down, and the clock on the wall reads 3:21 p.m.

"Do you consider this your last will and testament?" the attorney asks. "I do," replies Fizer, 67, a burly man with a small moustache. He has nothing, he says, aside from a bad heart. But at this milestone in his life he has his own attorney, and she is working for him for free.

She is Vanessa Buchko, 33, the solitary home-visit attorney with Project HELP, a program of Legal Counsel for the Elderly, which is supported by the city and the senior citizens' interest group AARP.

The small, two-year-old project provides free legal services to needy homebound senior citizens in the District, where an estimated 15,000 seniors are classified as homebound. "If you can get to us, by way of telephone, or your caregiver can, we'll come out to you," said Rawle Andrews Jr., the counsel's managing attorney. The number is 202-434-2120.

Buchko is a soft-spoken native of Florida who graduated from law school with honors, once worked for the FBI and now roams the city in a red Prius with a laptop and portable printer in the trunk. Wearing a lime green polo shirt and big sunglasses, she is also equipped with enormous reserves of patience.

She has been on the job about a year and has helped clients avoid eviction and get wheelchairs, hearing aids, food and clothing, as well as proper benefits. "It's really rewarding," she said. "There are a lot of frustrating days . . . but every once in a while you'll finish a case and you'll think, 'Oh, I really made a difference for that person.'"

One day last week, she and project law clerk Lindsey Leatherman spent a total of seven hours with the bricklayer along with a widow and an infirm church deacon, sorting out benefits matters, finalizing a will and warning the deacon about a possible home-sale scam.

They rummaged for misplaced paperwork, carefully read aloud the text of complex documents and sought a refund from a restaurant for the widow, who was confused about a bill. They stood in the spare, overheated quarters of the aged poor and listened as the clients told of past lives and current troubles and gave thanks for modest favors.

Deacon James Cunningham, 76, who lives in a tiny high-rise apartment on K Street NW, thanked Buchko for his nifty, new electric wheelchair. "It's small," he chuckled. "I can get in and out of small spaces. . . . I think about you when I be on it: 'It's Vanessa that caused me to get it.'

"I just thank the Lord to be living to see these days," he said.

This day began in Room 106 at the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home in Northwest Washington, where Buchko met with Valeria DeShields, a widowed former Department of Labor employee who had turned 78 the day before.

DeShields, elegant in a dark wig, black and white "birthday dress," gold earrings and lavender fingernails, came motoring along a corridor in an electric wheelchair.

Buchko was applying for long-term Medicaid benefits for DeShields but was having trouble getting her assets down to the $4,000 level, where she would qualify. DeShields was over the limit by $60.

She looked weary as she struggled to understand the bureaucratic ins and outs of the application, and she could not recall where certain documents were. "I'm getting a headache," DeShields said at one point.

She said her husband, Alphonso, had come to the home first, and she had joined him later. They had lived together in Room 106 until he died 2 1/2 years ago. They had been married 43 years and had no children. She looked anguished when she spoke of him. Now, the next bed is occupied by an elderly woman in a striped sweater, who dozed in a wheelchair.

DeShields said she could not recall when she had moved to the home but later found the arrival date, Oct. 17, 2001, written in big black letters on a paper in her faded address book.

After several hours of work, Buchko determined that the benefits problem could not immediately be resolved but promised to get back to DeShields later.

After she left the home, Buchko said she has watched DeShields gradually slipping. "It's sad," she said.

The next stop was Fizer's home in a senior citizens' building off 13th Street NW. A jaunty man who hails from Memphis, he had once worked on an oil pipeline in the wilds of northern Canada. He has two children in Detroit and one in Alabama. He said he was divorced from his wife.

Fizer wanted to have a will, though he said he possessed virtually nothing. "I don't own anything," he said, gesturing around his small studio apartment, but "what you see."

"I'm a broke man," he said with a laugh.

Still, Buchko said later, a will would simplify things for his family when Fizer dies, and in the meantime he could come into some money, which would go to his designated heirs. Fizer agreed. "Who knows," he said, "next month I might hit a Powerball game."

That task concluded, the last visit was to Deacon Cunningham's. A lanky man sporting suspenders and a black Redskins cap, he told Buchko he had recently seen a vision of his late mother, Nanny, standing by the front door. "I miss my mother so much," he said.

A neighbor had alerted Buchko to a house solicitation Cunningham had received. The attorney warned him that it might be a scam. "Mr. Cunningham, I'm worried that someone is trying to pull one over on you," she said. He said he understood.

As she was leaving, she asked him to let her know about anything that sounded suspicious.

"Will you call me?" she asked.

"If anything big comes up," he said. "I'll call you."