Benefit for Elgin firefighter is today

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

Tim Hinds returned from his mother’s funeral in February to find another tragedy had struck the family.

He had spoken with his wife, Joyce, several times in the few days he was out of town after his mother’s death. When she didn’t pick up the phone on the day he was heading back to their Rockford-area home, he wasn’t worried. He pulled into the garage and saw his wife sitting on the stoop inside their attached garage. It took him a few seconds to realize she wasn’t responding. His wife of 31 years, just 55 years old, had suffered a massive stroke.

Joyce Hinds has been hospitalized since the Feb. 23 stroke, her husband said. The stroke struck her brain’s centers for swallowing and speaking, as well as affecting her ability to walk, he said. While doctors have helped her regain her ability to eat and she was able to walk 20 feet recently with the help of a cane, Joyce Hinds hasn’t regained her ability to speak.

There have been other setbacks. Nerve pain leftover from the stroke has caused physical therapy to be a challenge. Once medication addressed the pain, his wife caught pneumonia, which she recently recovered from. Tim Hinds hopes to bring her home soon and had some help from the Elgin firefighters on that front.

Hinds is an engine driver at the Elgin Fire Department. Members of the Elgin Association of Firefighters Local 439 helped build a ramp to the house and installed other devices in the house to allow Joyce Hinds to come home.

The firefighters union is continuing to help, hosting a benefit for the Hinds family at 5 p.m. Saturday at Danny’s on Douglas, 231 Douglas Ave. in Elgin. For a $20 admission, attendees receive pizza, soda and one raffle ticket for baskets.

Tickets for other raffle baskets are $5 each, and a cash raffle — 3 tickets for $50 — enters guests to win $1,000, $500 or $250.

While insurance has paid for some of Joyce Hinds’ needs, her husband said, there are gaps. After the bout with pneumonia, which set back her physical therapy, the insurance company wanted to release her until she could start therapy again, he said.

The Hinds are paying out-of-pocket for Joyce to stay at the current rehab center in Niles to reduce the amount of moves necessary. Doctors are optimistic about her recovery, because of her young age and otherwise good health.

Hinds thanked his band of brothers at the Elgin Fire Department for their help in preparing for Joyce’s homecoming.

When Joyce was at the University of Wisconsin hospital, her husband told the staff that there were not a lot of family members to visit, but she would likely have “a whole bunch of brothers called firefighters, and they have been there for me. I can’t thank them enough,” Tim Hinds said.

thanks Dan