Woman, who suffered stroke, in need of hospital bed

Alberto Iracheta enjoys working. He is an all around handyman, a builder, a plumber, a gardener, a carpenter and an electrician. Though, he always preferred restaurant jobs.

"I would be dressed well and have money in my pocket from tips and have guaranteed food," Alberto says with a hearty chuckle.

He is short and a little stout. He has gentle eyes and a warm voice. But it is his hands, weathered like leather by sweltering suns and hard labor, which tell his story.

At 84 years old, he still takes odd jobs, mostly in maintenance, to earn extra money for his family of four. He collects social security to make ends meet. But he does not have enough to buy a hospital bed for his wife, who had a stroke about eight years ago that crippled the right side of her body.

Tomasa Iracheta, who will turn 55 years old Christmas Day, speaks with some difficulty. She does not remember much about her past or her childhood, except that she was raised on a small ranch in the Sierras of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and that at age 10 she moved to Querétaro to work as a babysitter.

Alberto met Tomasa about eight years after the death of his first wife, he said. She was in her 30s by then and working as a waitress in a cafe in Matamoros. She was beautiful, thin and had dark hair, Alberto said.

"I remember it was the little mole on her cheek that caught my attention," he said.

With Tomasa, Alberto had two daughters, Melissa and Lisbeth, now 16 and 17 years old. The family lives in a meager, two-bedroom apartment in Brownsville and has a humble, wooden home in Matamoros that Alberto built himself. He refuses to sell the property because he would have nothing to leave his children, he said. He worries about the coming years, about funding their college education as the medical bills keep piling.

For months after the stroke, Tomasa was bedridden, Alberto said. He and her two daughters would help dress, feed and bathe her. Now she can use a walker and do all that by herself, slowly and sometimes painfully.

But she cannot sleep lying flat on their full-sized bed because "I feel like I am running out of air, and I choke," Tomasa said. Instead, she sleeps on a worn, hard recliner in a corner of their small bedroom.

Alberto would be willing to buy the bed if he could only be allowed to pay small installments without going into debt. A few years ago, he unknowingly accepted a predatory loan when he was falling behind on medical payments and household expenses, he said. He only came out of bankruptcy this year.

Yet, Alberto’s kind smile conceals his financial troubles, friends say. And he does not like to ask for money.

He has been working since he was about 10 years old. Born in Calvert, Texas, in 1925, Alberto moved to Nuevo León, Mexico, with his father after his mother’s death. Every day, he would cross into the United States to take odd jobs and chores that would pay, he said.

When he turned 18 years old, he moved back to the United States to register for the draft during World War II but was not accepted into the military because he spoke little English, only phrases like "ham and eggs" and "pancakes," as he put it.

So he took clerical positions with the U.S. Department of Defense. After the war, he traveled throughout the United States, working in restaurants and in construction. He eventually married for the first time and raised two stepsons, who now work as welders in Texas City and Corpus Christi. Though they call and visit often, Alberto said, they have their own families to support.

"All we really need is that (hospital) bed. I’d put it here," he said, pointing next to the bed in their room. "I want her to sleep closer to me."