Help Heather Bower Get a Wheelchair Van for Emilee

Hi, friends! I'm raising money for my dear friend, Heather Bower, to be able to buy a wheelchair accessible van so she can transport her daughter, Emilee, to outings, vacations, appointments, and most importantly, home for the weekends. This fundraiser is sweetened by this: For every donation of $20, you will receive a ticket to enter a drawing to win a three night stay (worth over $600) at the Holiday Inn Express in the beautiful town of Helen, Georgia. (If you've never been to Helen, it's a replica of a Bavarian alpine town, in the Appalachians instead of the Alps. It's the perfect location for a fall trip as the leaves begin to turn!) Each $20 you donate will give you one ticket. If you want two tickets, donate $40... and so on. Drawing of the winning ticket to be held Saturday, August 31st at 7pm. (Donations to *this* gofundme only qualify for the drawing.)

Please read below for the purpose of this fundraiser, in Heather's words. And thank you in advance for your donation.

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I never would have done this, but I have had so many kind people say they would like to help I decided to go ahead and put it out there. I have never asked anyone for anything during my journey as a single mother and it is definitely a challenge for me to reach out to others for help. To know Emilee is to love her, and even if I have to swallow some pride, SHE deserves this!

Back in February I was hit by someone making an illegal turn and my handicapped accessible minivan that I used to transport my disabled daughter was totaled. Emilee is 24 years old, has cerebral palsy, is on the autism spectrum, and is completely wheelchair bound. She currently lives in an independent living group home; however, she was coming to my house every other weekend to visit me and our pets and to see her sister when she is home from college. On the weekends she did not come to my home, I regularly picked her up to take her to the park, to lunch, movies, bowling and/or to her Miracle League games (the staff at her home could not take her regularly due to issues with the other residents in her home). She thrives on routines, and hers has now been drastically changed with no resolution in sight. The van was also my primary source of transportation.

As a result of the accident my van was totaled. It was assessed at a value of $34,000 and was fully paid off. Because the person who caused the accident only carried the minimum liability coverage, I received more than $12,000 LESS than the value of the vehicle in property damage. The cost to replace my vehicle with another accessible van that would be reliable enough to use as my primary source of transportation would have been far beyond my means. Even with the money I received from the property damage settlement I would have had to take on a very large payment that I could not afford to replace the fully paid for van. I purchased a car and was hoping Emilee's dad would give me access to his van considering he very rarely uses it, but he has refused.

Since then my time with my daughter has been drastically impacted. It is heartbreaking to hear her say how much she misses coming home and going on our outings as regularly as she was before, as we now have to rely on the staff in her home to bring her to my house for visits. Her visits are now much shorter than they were previously and once she comes to visit, we are unable to go out and do the things we used to do - go to the movies, shopping, to lunch, etc. Renting an accessible vehicle is extremely expensive and is not something I can afford to do. I can no longer take her to her games which is causing her to lose out on socialization that she desperately needs.

Since I have reliable primary transportation, I just need to raise enough money to purchase a vehicle that can be used only to transport Emilee. Brand new they run $70-95,000.00! I should be able to find something with less than 100,000 miles in the $25,000.00 range (I have looked at a few and can't find anything under $20,000 that isn't 15-20 years old and/or has well over 150,000 miles on it). We are taking a trip to Florida for Emilee's 25th birthday in September that she has been counting down to all year, and it would be amazing to have a new van by then for the trip!

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you are unable to help, which I completely understand with how tough times are right now, please send a few prayers and positive vibes our way. It has been a rough year between Emilee's emergency surgery in February, the car accident two weeks later, a second no-fault accident three weeks after that when someone rear ended me, fighting the insurance company, dealing with the aftermath and trying to be with my girl as much as possible. We could definitely use a win!