With her new dog. Rosina Howard, 85, was just given a little puppy by a small group of friends she has met just because one day in a retail store, she asked the supervisor for help. Since then, this young man has befriended her and so have a few of his friends. Howard has named the dog, Shery. Photo by Mel Toadvine

A couple of years ago 85-year-old Rosina Howard of Lehigh was shopping in one of the retail stores in town when a supervisor approached and offered to help her find what she wanted.

Howard asked the young man if he would be her friend.

“He was so nice to me and helped me find all the things I needed to get,” she said. “When I asked if he would be my friend,” he said he would be glad to my friend and he took me out to lunch.

The young man is Edwin Rivera, who was a supervisor at the time at the Dollar General store in the Lehigh Towne Center on the corner of Alabama and Homestead Rds.

Rivera has continued his friendship with the elderly woman whose husband died some years ago. She has no children and lives on a meager income. She doesn’t drive and she says she really doesn’t know her neighbors.

Edwin Rivera

“People in Lehigh should check on their elderly neighbors,” Rivera said. “You never know when they may have fallen, gotten sick or anything could have happened.”

“I would like to see Lehigh become a more caring community and start looking out for their neighbors and especially our older citizens,” he said.

Rivera has continued the friendship and now he and a few friends have come to know Rosina Howard as “mama.” And Howard says she loves that because she has no children and no grandchildren.

She was born in Austria and came to the U.S. many years ago and she and her late husband finally settled in Lehigh.

Rivera said that when he came to visit her, he noticed that things were not as tidy as perhaps they should be. He offered to help clean things up, but he said there was a lot of things to do and explained that it was difficult for Howard to do all those things.

Surrounded by her new friends. Rosina Howard, who lives alone in Lehigh and has no family, has recently become friends with a young group of people who have cleaned her house, painted the outside and look in on her every day to make she is okay. Photo by Mel

So Rivera called a few friends, all of whom, he said are good people and introduced them to the elderly woman.

There was an instant connection and now they all call her “mama” and they take turns checking in on her every day at least and some times more to make sure she is okay.

Over the past few months, the friends – Sonia Cedeno, Jolio Eseribano, Yalanda Garza, Lino Huerta, Ada Adorno, NeFerhti Castano and Edwin, himself – decided to really show their mama how much they care for her as a person.

They volunteered to take on some serious problems in the house. It was cluttered and untidy, problems with the bathroom plumbing, and other problems. The walls inside the house had not been painted for years and the exterior needed a paint job, too.

So they went to work on their days off from their jobs to help Rosina Howard.

“They were so kind to me and they do look in on me. I love them like family,” Howard said.

The problem with the plumbing in the bathroom caused water to spill over into the living room, ruining an old stained carpet. Rivera said her insurance paid to replace it.

Howard wasn’t sure what color she wanted and her new friends kept asking and they got clues that she like red colors.

So they selected a Burgundy colored carpet and Howard said she loved it.

Then they painted the walls and again Howard said she was overjoyed. they installed a new toilet in her bathroom and cleaned up the tile until it sparkled.

Howard tries to wash her own clothes, but somehow they had gotten piled up, but Rivera said he washes her clothes when he can’t.

“She hangs them out and insists on that,” he said. “But she really need a new electric clothes dryer. The old one isn’t any good anymore,” Rivera said. So that is their next project, trying to gather up enough money to buy a clothes dryer. If anyone wants to help, they can call Rivera on his cell at 239-464-8995.

“It would help if she didn’t have to go outside and hang up her clothes because not only is it hot now, but she has to use a cane to get around, Rivera said.

She didn’t have money to have a lot of things done because her sole income was mainly Social Security.

“Edwin is like my angel,” said Howard. “They all are like my angels.”

Last week, her “angels” surprised her with a little puppy. Howard took to the puppy as much as the puppy did to her, by his licking of her face and wagging his little tail.

“The dog will be a lot of company for her,” Rivera said. “And we are going to buy the dog food and what it takes to support the dog,” he said.

The little five-week old puppy is a Chihuahua and they are known for the loud barking.

“I’m going to name him Shery,” Howard said. “Oh, he is so cute.”

Rivera said they aren’t finished yet. A lot of the clutter has been put out on the lanai and they have to decide with her help what she wants to keep and what should be discarded.

“She’s a very sweet woman,” Rivera said. “We all love her a lot. My own mother is living in Puerto Rico, so it’s nice to have a friend here I can call mama,” he smiled.

“That brief meeting at the dollar store started a nice friendship. I took her to Perkins for breakfast and I am very glad to know her and so are her new friends.”

Rivera again reiterated what he said at the beginning of the interview: that everyone who has an elderly neighbor should be checking on them, especially if they have no family.

“Just check on them is not always enough, either,” he said. “You want to make sure they are not living in deplorable conditions, that their dishes are washed and their kitchen is clean, that the bathroom is in working order … as people get older and they have no family, it is more difficult to do a lot of things around the house that need to be done.

“We are also making sure that nobody is out to cheat her. Every dime she has counts,” Rivera said. “And as long as we have our new mama here in Lehigh, we’re going to look out for her,” Rivera said.