Injured While Helping Others, Retiree Is Left in Need of Help

Every afternoon, Marcella Castro fixes her husband, Raul, one of his favorite meals and the two sit and chat until nightfall. The ritual is mostly one-sided, though, with Marcella patiently making conversation as her husband of 48 years stares blankly or mutters unintelligibly from his wheelchair.

It’s not the way Marcella, 66, envisioned themselves spending their later years.

The two spend much of their time together at an Oxnard rehabilitation facility, where Raul has lived since suffering brain injuries in 2001 when he fell from a house he was helping to build as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.

With extremely limited cognitive and motor skills, the retired civil engineer no longer possesses the outgoing personality that made him a mentor and a leader among those who give their time to build homes for low-income families.

Raul, a big man with a bushy mustache, still looks the same, but the once-playful 67-year-old now has trouble recognizing old friends, struggles to speak and sometimes gets frustrated and aggressive when he’s unable to convey his thoughts, Marcella said.

“It’s hard to see him this way,” she said. “Especially when his grandchildren come to visit. They want to go and hug him, and there’s a moment when he’s happy and recognizes them, but 10 minutes later, he’s out of it. It hurts, because before the accident, he was always playing with them.”

For two years, Marcella has relied on the staff at the Care Meridian facility to help improve her husband’s condition. With a combination of medication and physical therapy, Raul has gotten better.

Bouts of aggression have diminished. And with some help, he is able to dress himself and brush his teeth now.

But next month, the $500,000 insurance coverage Habitat provides for injured volunteers will run out, and the Castro family has no backup plan.

Marcella and a group of friends sent letters to former President Carter at Habitat headquarters in Atlanta, but were informed that there was nothing more the nonprofit could do without risking its ability to provide coverage for other volunteers.

Habitat for Humanity “were very good and paid his medical bills and, frankly, they didn’t have to, but they went ahead and covered him,” said Chad Medlin, director of nursing at the facility.

“It’s tough because he had just begun his retirement and they had their golden years to look forward to, and now this time has turned into something totally different.”

The couple lives on Raul’s fixed retirement income and won’t be able to afford the $650 a day it now costs to care for him. Marcella worries that it will be hard to find another facility, one that accepts Medicare patients and that can deal with Raul’s sometimes aggressive behavior.

She fears the progress he’s made might be undone at a larger facility with an unfamiliar staff. At the time of the accident, Raul was part of a group of Habitat volunteers working on a 22-home subdivision in Piru.

He was carrying a piece of plywood when he fell through a hole in the roof of one house, hitting his head as he slammed into the structure’s concrete foundation 15 feet below.

Doctors operated for several hours to relieve a brain hemorrhage. But Raul suffered extensive injuries that affected everything from his ability to walk to how his brain processes information.

“I just left him in God’s hands,” Marcella said. “I figured I couldn’t do anything but pray.”

Retired from his job at the Port Hueneme naval base, Raul always managed to stay busy. Whether it was serving in various civic organizations or fixing something at the couple’s Ventura home, Raul was on the go.

One day at church, a flier for Habitat for Humanity caught his eye. He liked the idea of using his handyman skills to help the less fortunate.

“He’d get a lot of joy once the house was finished,” Marcella said. “He figured somebody deserved it. He always put other people ahead of himself.”

Elden Sandy, 62, was Habitat’s construction coordinator at the time of Raul’s accident.

The two men started their volunteer work at the same time in 1996, rebuilding a home for a Piru family who lost their dwelling in the Northridge earthquake two years earlier.

“Over the years, he and I worked together a lot,” said Sandy, now president of Habitat’s board of directors. “He had an amazing amount of skill in construction and as a heavy-equipment operator. He was a mentor to many people, including myself.”

Sandy described Raul as a “giving person” who was always willing to share his technical skills and knowledge with others.

Though he didn’t witness the accident, Sandy said he was at the site that day and was the one who assigned Raul to work on the roof because of his experience and safety record.

“He was one of the safest guys on the job,” Sandy said. “He was always making sure we were adhering to safety practices and teaching us how to do things. Everyone enjoyed working with him. It’s been a real loss not to have him.”

Before Raul retired, Marcella said, she had worried that the two of them might get on each other’s nerves.

Now she misses his companionship and misses the sound of Raul working on his household projects.

“It’s very lonesome when you’re used to being with your husband for 40-something years and, all of a sudden, there’s nobody to argue with,” she said.

“They’ll be evaluating him in a week, but it seems like there’s no hope of me having him back completely.”