JAMES PINO 

            FOUNDER OF EDL

   The founder of EDL personally knows how far help can go. In the middle of law school, 2010, he suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury while on a motorcycle. He had to relearn how to do the most basic activities like walking and talking.

   The injury he sustained and the difficulties that come with it, remind us of our values as a business. We truly understand how difficult it is to go through the day-to-day struggles of life. Living life can be so hard sometimes. That is why we highly consider “life struggles” as a main factor when determining who gets financial help. It is very hard to be reminded each day of what your former self could do. For our founder personally, his speech is slurred, his eyesight is double most of the time, his ability to think becomes foggy later in the day, he has tremors, and his energy level is almost gone by noon. All these areas are just not what they used to be for him. Every day, he is reminded about those things. A simple conversation with somebody reveals all his faults.

   To further explain the daily issues he faces, his speech becomes more and more slurred throughout the day.  To add to his speech frustrations, it is increasingly difficult for him to think. His thoughts are in order, but when he verbally speaks his spoken language does not make sense to most people.

   Even if he can somehow forget those things are occurring, his eyesight rears its ugly head and never lets him forget about his troubles. In order to see straight his head needs to be tilted or his eyesight separates into two images. His eyesight makes it is extremely hard to read and his tremors make it hard to write too. Words become unrecognizable because they are so squiggly. These obstacles are so Frustrating to deal with each day.

   Now, we know and realize many people, unfortunately, live a life much more difficult and have things much worse. However, our main point is to let you know, we know what it is like to be reminded of your disabilities daily. To be reminded each day of what things used to be like.

   Good news, things still can be accomplished. Yes, life is a little different now, but that is ok. Acceptance of your situation must occur to move forward. Our founder achieved many things with self-determination and help from therapy and the department of assistive and rehabilitative services (DARS), he graduated law school and created this nonprofit. Without help, he firmly believes things would have turned out much different. That is why EDL wants to help. We know firsthand how much of a difference it makes.

   Our mission at Elderly or Disabled Living is to provide help to the ones who need it. EDL’s way of helping others is to assist financially or by providing resources.

PLEASE NEVER GIVE UP HOPE!