SAN ANTONIO – On May 5, San Antonians are being urged to open their hearts and their wallets and give big to local charities as part of the second-annual Big Give SA campaign.
One local charity hoping to gain the community's support is Women Involved In Nurturing Giving and Sharing, or WINGS.
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WINGS provides no-cost treatment and life-time follow-up care to women in South Texas who have breast cancer and are uninsured.
One such woman is Joleen Schriedel.
“They embrace you and they reach out to you to help you. And not only you, they help your family," she said.
Schriedel was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago. She had just started a new job, and while she signed up for insurance, she wasn’t eligible for it for one month.
Before that month was up, she got the diagnosis.
"I told my doctor, 'What am i going to do? I don't have insurance?' That's when she gave me that wonderful telephone number 946-9464, and that was the number that saved my life," she said.
When Schriedel contacted WINGS, co-founder Terri Jones was there to help.
"It's very simple: Women with breast cancer who are uninsured are admitted into the WINGS program. We pay for all their care (and) they go home to their families whole, healthy and happy," Jones said.
Patients must meet certain criteria to be accepted into the program, but once they are in, they are in for life. More than 800 women in the San Antonio area are already WINGS patients, and the need to continues to grow despite the Affordable Health Care Act.
"Believe it or not, not everyone is eligible for Obamacare," Jones said. "I thought when I first heard about it, ‘Great, WINGS will no longer be needed and I can go lay on a beach somewhere!' The truth is a lot of people don’t qualify. You have to have a certain income threshold to be able to pay those premiums. And even with the subsidies, many can't meet the income threshold."
WINGS' reach goes beyond the uninsured. WINGS has a separate program that picks up COBRA payments for those who qualify, so if they lose their job while in treatment, they never have a lapse in care.
"That way (a patient) can get her treatment, complete it, (and) can stay with her doctors," Jones said. "She can get back to the workforce as quick as possible."
WINGS has been supported by Oprah Winfrey as one of the first recipients of her Angel awards. It has also been recognized and supported by the San Antonio Spurs, the Komen Foundation and thousands of other businesses and individuals.
But Jones said they can use your support too.
"WINGS is special because it's local, our money stays here, we treat women here, and we save their lives," she said.
So during Big Give SA, Jones and Schriedel are urging the public to remember WINGS, which doesn’t just save the lives of patients, but also ensures families stay together.
"There's not enough midnight basketball in the world to help a kid who loses his mom to breast cancer," Jones said.
“My children could have lost their mother. And at the time, my children were 9, 10 and 15. We are all so grateful to this wonderful nonprofit," Schriedel said.
For more information about WINGS, visit their website at www.texaswings.org.
Below is a map of all nonprofit participants in this year's Big Give SA: