Neighbors social media post helps 75-year-old Dickinson woman repair broken AC
HOUSTON - With the ongoing heat wave, temperatures have been in the triple digits for the last several weeks. One elderly woman in Dickinson has spent the last month without working air-conditioning. Her neighbors are now stepping up to change that.
"It's not something that you can endure easily. I don’t understand how people without AC make it," said Jan Johnston.
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For the last month, 75-year-old Jan Johnston has been living without AC. Temperatures inside her Dickinson home reached the mid 90s.
Her neighbor across the street, Brittany Bishop, found out and made a post to Facebook, asking others to help.
"One of the neighbors brought her over a portable AC unit to help her kind of cool down. She said I haven’t been able to cook, haven’t been able to really clean or anything like that, because it’s been so hot. She, at one point, told me she thought she might have to go to the hospital, because she felt like she was exhausted, like heat exhaustion," said Brittany Bishop.
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A quick assessment from Robert Burge with Cowboy Cooling revealed that some of Ms. Jan’s air-conditioning equipment is 24-years-old.
Burge said Ms. Jan's house is overdue for maintenance repairs. But after having a few surgeries recently and living off social security and a small pension, it was an extra cost she couldn’t afford.
"I went to the attic and saw all the duct work was ripped up in the attic. There had been raccoons and rodents and stuff like that crawling around in her attic just making a mess and tearing everything up. At that point, I knew we had to do more than just put batteries in her thermostat," Burge said.
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With the help of social media, the community raised more than $2,200 overnight and immediately got Ms. Jan the help and relief she desperately needed.
"I'm having faith in people again because I'm blessed. That’s all there is to it. God has given me angels all around me. Over there, over here, over here. They just take care of me, and it's a wonderful thing," Johnston said.
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Burge said his technicians at Cowboy Cooling are just a few hundred dollars short of completely covering the materials needed for repairs.