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Veterans get a hand after flood from North Chicago group

Lake County News-Sun - 7/24/2017

July 21--Members of the Midwest Veterans Closet in North Chicago haven't let any flooding stop them from offering a helping hand to another veteran.

When the Des Plaines River first overflowed and set a new record last week, a veteran and his family contacted them for help after their house filled with 3 feet of water, said Mary Gornik Carmody.

"They needed clothes, shoes, beds, blankets, pillows, toiletries," she said, which the nonprofit organization was able to provide for free as the family found a place in Antioch to wait out the flood.

Then this week, the Veterans Closet received a call from a veteran in Grayslake who needed help getting things out of a flooded basement, she said. Shieve Waugh and Josh Jessop, both veterans, happened to be at the Veterans Closet helping move items from a warehouse that Carmody said the organization had been using, but now they have to move the stored furniture out.

"As soon as the call came, these two volunteered to go right away," she said of the Jessop and Waugh.

Lisa Hoffman and her husband, Darren, who is a veteran, said they were renting a house in Grayslake and using the basement for storage when the rains came and flooded the basement.

"We are both disabled, and our 19-year-old son couldn't do it all," she said. Hoffman added that she called around and got the number of Lake County Board member Judy Martini, who knows Carmody personally, and Martini provided the Hoffmans' contact information.

"They were wonderful," said Hoffman. "They took a lot of stuff up out of the basement."

Hoffman added that the volunteers gave her their personal cellphone numbers so she could call them back if more help was needed.

"They didn't have to do that," she said. "These two young men were awesome. They deserve some recognition."

While the Hoffmans have flood insurance, it only covers $10,000, and she estimated their loss is close to $10,000 because of the furniture that was stored in the basement.

"That was our storage unit," she said. "It's pretty bad, but of course it's been devastating for a lot of people."

Not all of the stories Carmody is hearing have a happy ending.

Take Timothy Meduga, 44, who lives in an apartment complex in Park City, where many of the first floor apartments like his got flooded out.

According to Meduga, he has lived in the same building for 10 years, and last time a flood hit, in 2013, management put everyone in a hotel for a couple of weeks so the apartments could be fixed.

"This time no one is helping," said Meduga, who paid for his own hotel for a few days and then ended up at the Red Cross shelter at Jefferson School in Waukegan. "(The apartment managers) are doing a poor job of dealing with the tenants."

Meduga said he served in the Air Force in the medical field during the first Gulf War between 1990 and 1996, and now has a service-connected mental health disability.

"I can only do so much," said Meduga, who received some bedding from the Veterans Closet on Friday and headed back to the Red Cross shelter at the Waukegan school.

fabderholden@tribpub.com

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(c)2017 Lake County News-Sun (Lake County, Ill.)

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