A satisfying way to help and remember
Yad Sarah recycles used medical equipment
Two Five Towns residents, involved in the same organization, came together to create a unique program that recycles used medical equipment here in the U.S. and sends it to patients in Israel.
Retired computer programmer Bob Schwell, who had been in Israel for a significant portion of 2004 repairing medical equipment for Yad Sarah, was fine tuning the organization’s computers in New York, when Friends of Yad Sarah Executive Director Adele Goldberg got the idea that there was probably a lot of excess medical equipment in this country.
“I had a situation with my mother-in-law, where we ordered a wheelchair and she never used it,” said Goldberg, who lives in North Woodmere. “I thought a lot of people must have surplus equipment and they don’t require people to return it, and they end up throwing it out. That’s really a pity.”
So not to let an opportunity go by and waste that medical equipment, Goldberg created the recycling program and tasked Schwell with being its coordinator. “This organization, Yad Sarah, lends out medical equipment free of charge and I wanted to volunteer,” he said, in explaining his initial involvement, which then got him put in charge of the recycling program. The Woodmere resident spends about eight months of the year in Israel spending time with his children and grandchildren.
That program has blossomed as Schwell, his volunteers, and with assistance from Moishe’s Movers, has collected more than 250,000 pieces of equipment annually through the past five years. “I thought it was a relatively easy way for us to participate in doing a good deed,” said Micha Lang, vice president of Moishe’s Movers, a New York City-based moving and storage company that has locations throughout the U.S.
In addition to doing a mitzvah, Lang and his children rode on Yad Sarah’s float in the 2009 Israel Day Parade that marches down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. “We were on the float, it was very special,” said Lang, whose children, a girl and a boy, were then 10 and 7, respectively.
