- March 28, 2024
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The Ormond by the Sea Lions Club helped a local homeless man replace an old, infected ocular prosthetic, helping him "not feel so much like a freak" in the process.
BY BOBBIE CHEH | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
For Juan Pichardo, a former construction worker, the writing was on the wall.
Schools and churches seemed to be the only places left with money enough for building projects. It was 2008, and Pichardo's industry was crumbling.
“I was a construction worker in his late 50s who, for years, had worked successfully on many major construction projects,” he said. “But the summer of 2008 was calm before the August storm that confirmed that the financial meltdown was not just a passing incident.”
By 2009, Pichardo lost his job, then his car. He began staying nights at a time at friends’ houses and in motels.
“The platitude that many workers are just a paycheck away from being homeless was now a possibility for me,” he said.
After the temp jobs at day-labor halls dried up, Pichardo started sleeping in the woods.
He did have other skills, he says, mostly in the computer-graphics trade. But he hadn’t worked in that field for the past decade, since he moved to Florida. Construction simply paid more.
“My clothes started to get ragged,” Pichardo said. “My beard went unkempt. ... My glasses broke.”
But he was determined not to let his circumstances get him down. He found a replacement pair of glasses in the Ormond by the Sea Lions Club collection box. But that wasn’t the last time the Lions would come to his aid.
Following an accident in 1986, Pichardo’s left eye was damaged and started withering. He had to wear a sclera shell, an ocular prosthetic, over it; but since going homeless, the shell had been in long past the four to six years recommended by his doctor.
It began getting infected on a weekly basis.
“The accident had left the globe of my eye shriveled up from a plump grape to a raisin, and the shell helped shield my face from scaring people with that horrible sight,” he said. “It also helped me not feel like such a freak.”
Over time, he learned that the best way to survive homelessness was not to look homeless. But a replacement shell would cost nearly $1,800 — money Pichardo just didn’t have.
“I had nowhere to turn,” he said. “So it came as a great surprise when I was contacted by the local Ormond by the Sea Lions’ chapter member Mary Yochum.”
Yochum had found out about Pichardo through community contacts. Another member, Les Walter, drove him to eye appointments in St. Augustine for shell fittings and follow-ups. Then the club bought him a replacement.
Pichardo was no stranger to volunteer groups: After losing his house, he got involved with agencies that worked in homelessness prevention, homelessness and reintegration. But he says he was “totally ignorant” about the Lions.
“Homelessness is not a crime; it’s merely a condition,” Pichardo said. “And unlike most professional social services agencies I’ve come to know, the Lion’s Club ... does their tireless work as unsung heroes of the community.”
The club even got him another new pair of glasses when his first replacement pair got scuffed up.
The Ormond by the Sea Lions club will also lead a beach cleanup 8-10:30 a.m. Saturday, at Highbridge, as well as Bicentennial and Tom Renick parks, out toward New Smyrna Beach. And it will host a free disaster-preparedness seminar next month.
Email [email protected].
— Mike Cavaliere contributed to this report.