Daniel Rubin: Tiny nonprofit at Shore is huge act of random kindness

The front door of Busch's seafood is locked, but that doesn't keep Lana Samuels out.

She slips around to a side entrance of the Sea Isle City institution, hoping to catch owner Al Schettig off guard.

Schettig is walking through the empty dining room in his chef's whites when he spots the humbly dressed woman.

He starts running for the kitchen.

"How are you doing this year?" Samuels calls after him, and he takes a couple of steps before freezing.

She begins her spiel in a gentle voice, full of facts and figures and urgency.

"People are hurting," she says. "We need money to help them."

There's the Absecon man whom she helped get a kidney transplant, and now he isn't doing so well, she tells him. The Cape May County woman with Tarlov cysts, another woman with an immune deficiency. The list goes on.

Schettig digs into his pocket. He hands her $50, says he wishes it were more. His restaurant is closing after the season.

"The reason I can't run from you is that you have a spirit of dedication," he says. "How can I say no to you? How can anyone? I call it ARK. You're one big act of random kindness."

Valerie Kirby, owner of Valerie's Restaurant down Landis Avenue, couldn't say no either - she was good for $20. Nor could the gray-haired woman renting the house a block from the ocean on 87th Street, who rubbed her hands as Samuels made her pitch, then handed her a five.

Neither could I.

Lana Samuels called several weeks ago about her tiny nonprofit called People in Crisis, which raises money to buy insurance and provide rides and rent for those who are ill and have fallen through the cracks. Too good to be true?

I did a little checking.

She has a way of getting good people to support her, which explains why serving on her board are Sandra Weibel, director of the pulmonary function lab at Thomas Jefferson University, and Temple neuroscientist George Tuszynski and his wife, Vicki Rothman, a medical researcher.

"I think some people are taken aback by Lana," Weibel says, "but she truly wants to help people."

Samuels and I had arranged to meet at one of her offices - a McDonald's in Cape May Court House. Usually she travels everywhere by bus. She roped me in as her driver.

She's on the phone when I arrive. She's trying to reassure a man who is facing eviction that she's collected enough money to buy him some time.

"It's going to be OK," she tells him. "You'll have money to live."

She turns to me. "This man is severely traumatized," she says.

Samuels has bright blue eyes and long brown hair that's gathered in a ponytail and tucked under a Rita's ball cap the color of strawberry ice. She is 60, although she doesn't measure her life that way - she lost too much time to her accident.

That accident is the driving force behind what she does, says the Rev. John Sosnowski, rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Stone Harbor.

Back in 1989 she was working two jobs - as a substitute teacher and selling Keebler cookies - when she slipped in the stockroom of a Rio Grande supermarket. Her neck snapped and she suffered a brain injury that still makes her thoughts sometimes spray like Silly String.

During the nearly two years it took for her to get disability payments, she couldn't afford medicine or rent.

A friend stepped forward. He'd been working two jobs and saving money. He gave her about $60,000. She never forgot that kindness.

When he, himself, became sick - he developed a debilitating allergy to household items - Samuels started knocking on doors for help.

Seven years later, she's still at it.

A typical day for her begins with a couple of hours of solicitations, then phone work, helping her clients cut through red tape - she's become quite proficient at battling bureaucracy, Weibel says.

Often the door-knocking yields not just contributions but also clients. She'll ask people if they need anything, and they might tell of a friend or relative.

That's how she found Vince Pacentrilli, 62, the Absecon man whom she helped fill out forms to qualify for Medicaid, shopped for, visited by bus. "She's a very persistent person," he says. "She is my guardian angel."

Until this year Samuels never had to detail her fund-raising to the IRS because she didn't take in enough money. But in 2009 AstraZeneca donated $30,000. After paying for legal work and buying insurance for her nonprofit, Samuels was left with about $25,000. She gave it all to clients. She's hoping for more corporate sponsors.

"It's hard work going door to door and advocating for people," Sosnowski says. "Just collecting money is challenging. She puts up with verbal abuse."

"I've been swung at, kicked at, spit at," Samuels says.

But not on Thursday.

The couple of hours I'm with her, she has a 100 percent success rate. "Tomorrow," she says, "I won't be so fortunate. You just look."

When I let her off in Sea Isle, I realize I haven't asked her if she has a husband or children.

"No," she says with a smile. "I have nothing. I have no life."

I beg to differ, but she waves me off, then trudges off, looking for more doors to try.

Visit Lana Samuels' nonprofit's website at peopleincrisis.net.EndText