Safe Streets aids the elderly

Mary had been waiting at a bus stop on Cross Bay Boulevard for almost an hour one evening last April when she finally decided to walk home despite carrying a number of shopping bags.
It was growing late and the then 75-year-old wanted to be home before dark— precisely to avoid what happened next.
She neared her home “walking nonchalantly and unaware,” as she described it. When she was about 100 feet from her house she felt a hand clamp down on her face.
“I didn’t know what was happening. I thought it was somebody who knew me kidding around,” she said. “Then all of a sudden I’m on the floor.”
The thief fled with her purse and Mary, who asked that her last name not be used because of her lingering fears connected with the mugging, “started to get all shaky and panicked.”
The police arrived, and Mary, who received scratches and bruises during the mugging, went to the hospital. Eventually, her injuries healed.
Aside from the property that was taken that day, what Mary can not recover is her sense of security.
“I came from a bad neighborhood and I always felt comfortable here,” Mary said of Howard Beach, her home of 15 years. “Now I’m afraid to even walk to church.”
But one thing that made the aftermath easier was the help she received to pay her unforeseen medical bills from elder advocate Debra J. Lapadula.
Lapadula, who said she was inspired to undertake her work because both of her grandmothers experienced abuse from hired care providers, is the elder crime victims coordinator for the Howard Beach Senior Center (HBSC).
Paid for through the city’s Department for the Aging (DFTA) Safe Streets program, Lapadula works to ensure that elderly crime victims get the specialized assistance they may need. She also conducts seminars on crime prevention and home and personal safety techniques and arranges for free lock replacements as necessary.
“I could have never done what she did,” Mary said, describing how Lapadula helped get her reimbursed for ambulance and hospital fees by applying to the New York State Crime Victims Board. That agency compensates innocent crime victims and funds direct services to crime victims through community-based programs.
Unaware of the resource, “I wouldn’t have known how to handle that,” Mary said. Additionally, because Mary was on a fixed income, the $432 worth of bills she later received would have been difficult for her to pay, she said.
But Lapadula’s Safe Streets services, which she provided for the first time last year when HBSC began receiving funding, will be available only until June 30 of this year. At that time the money to pay her will have run out.
Some in the community would like to see that change.
“It should be more than six months,” said Joe Iaboni, president of the Jamaica Rotary Club, where Lapadula has made presentations. “The politicians should put more money in the budget for it.”
HBSC director Isaac Albala said that while he has not received feedback about the program directly, he understood that the seniors were sorry to see it go last July and will be again.
Safe Streets is paid for by City Council discretionary funding distributed through DFTA. The program is found in 24 equally-funded community-based programs citywide, five of which are in Queens, said DFTA spokesperson Christopher Miller.
Albala said that while he is unlikely to know until the end of the year whether he will receive funding to hire Lapadula again next January, some funding is preferable to none at all.
And even if the amount doesn’t increase to year-round, “The alternative would be to turn down the program and I think that would be worse,” he said.