Working for a better future

Daretha Tolbert smiles in her Fairview living room. She takes care of her mother, Bertha Simpson, who has Alzheimer's disease. Tolbert is in need of a bed, help with mortgage payments, a refrigerator and a job.

Last Christmas, Daretha Tolbert got the best gift she could imagine: her mother, at home with her at last.

Bertha Simpson, now 81, had been living alone in Oregon and showing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Tolbert, 48, lives on a modest income, but she opened her Fairview home to her mother without hesitation. "She took care of us," said Tolbert, "so I felt like it was time to take care of her."

Tolbert remembers her mother going to heroic extremes to raise her, a sister and two brothers, in rural North Carolina after their father died when she was 6.

"I remember how hard she used to work," Tolbert said. "She cleaned floors and got a job in a tobacco plant." To make extra money, her mother sold bowls of soup.

When her mother first came to Tolbert's home and asked "How long do you want me to stay?" Tolbert didn't hesitate. "Forever."

Simpson still recognizes her daughter, and she can get around using a cane. Sometimes she helps clean and mend, tasks that help her feel useful. It's good having her around, Tolbert says. "I would never put her in a home."

Tolbert did not tell her mother this, but the bed she moved to her mother's room was her own. Tolbert sleeps on a 17-year-old mattress supported by cinder blocks instead of a bed frame. "I've turned this mattress over I don't know how many times," she said, showing it.

Financially, things are hard. Divorced in 1987, Tolbert is on her own. She works "on call" for the public defender's office as an administrative assistant, taking calls, filing and other office work, but she does not have full-time income. Repetitive stress injury has made it difficult for her to find appropriate work. She picks up what she can, arranging for a friend to watch her mother when she is away. Earlier this year, she took a temporary job with the Census Bureau.

When her brother, Gregory, 50, died unexpectedly this July, the expense of traveling to his funeral in North Carolina drained her reserves. For the first time, said Tolbert, she is behind in mortgage payments. Though she needs storm windows and several appliances don't work properly, including a lukewarm refrigerator, Tolbert can't replace them.

Despite obstacles, Tolbert is determined to continue caring for her mother and to progress toward another goal: getting her bachelor of arts degree. She's been taking classes -- "a class here and there" -- for 16 years, in pursuit of a degree in elementary education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. A former Sunday school teacher, she would like to teach for a living. If all goes well, she says she could finish her degree within a year.

"That'd be great," she says. "That'd be the epitome of my life."

Tolbert says her most immediate needs are catching up on her mortgage and getting a new refrigerator. She'd also like any leads to a full-time job.

Always civic-minded, Tolbert isn't one to ask for help; she's usually pitching in somewhere herself. She is vice president of the Fairview Community Council and previously was an officer on the Mountain View council and in her daughter's Parent Teacher Association.

Judy Johnson, a case manager in the transitional living program of Lutheran Social Services, said Tolbert's story touched her. "She's genuine," Johnson said. "Sometimes people just get caught in the cracks." n

Daretha Tolbert

E-1 Bed frame, mattress and box springs, $355

E-2 Overdue mortgage payments, $1,165