WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — A 79-year-old retired nurse in Willoughby who faced the possibility of jail time over the condition of her lawn is receiving a wave of community support, including volunteers, donated services, and a lawyer who stepped up to represent her pro bono.
Beverly Thomas was summoned to court because of her lawn. She said she could no longer maintain it due to tremors and arthritis, and the cost of upkeep was too much on a fixed income.
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Since her story aired, teams of volunteers have helped, thousands of dollars have been raised, and services have been performed for free or at a discounted rate, including the removal of a huge, dead, old tree. The tree is believed to be the last violation to be addressed before a court date this week.
Early Tuesday morning, eight people and six pieces of equipment moved in to take down a large, old, dead tree, limb by limb.
"It makes us feel pretty good,“ said Tony Rangel of Rangel Brothers Tree Service.
“We don’t want to see a 79 -year-old woman go to jail," he said.
Norb Sanek started a GoFundMe and organized the volunteers who reached out.
"There's way more good people out there than bad people,” Sanek said.
Christine Tibaldi saw our story and volunteered to represent Thomas in court.
"She has a pretrial on Thursday. She went by herself to the arraignment. I didn't represent her at that time, but I filed a motion to excuse her from attending which was granted immediately. I'm going to go on her behalf," Tibaldi said.
Thomas said the news was a relief.
"It's wonderful. This is good news."
She said she is thankful and grateful for the kindness of strangers.
"I'm very blessed, " Thomas said. "Guardian angels came to help a stranger. I never met them before in my life, and here they are.”
Sanek said volunteers plan to return in the coming weeks.
"We're going to get together and build her a real nice sitting garden where she can feed the birds and squirrels and have coffee and relax," said Sanek.
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