Making Change

Candido S., 38, had an unexpected stroke in January 2023. He was in the hospital for about two weeks and has been working on recovery ever since.

One MainStreet Bank employee seized the opportunity to help her brother with a donation from MainStreet Bank’s Making Change program. The program offers employees the opportunity to give help to those who need it the most. That can include charitable organizations and individuals with demonstrated need.

“He has a lot of energy and he loves to be with family,” his sister said. “He’s full of life.” She says they were very close growing up.

Candido is two years younger than his sister. She remembers they often played together in her childhood home in El Salvador. Her family moved to the U.S. when she was 15.

Candido has three children between the ages of 13 and 16. He and his wife live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and he worked as a superintendent for an HVAC contractor before the stroke. Candido was the primary wage earner for his family but has not been able to return to work. He lost his health insurance when he lost his job, so now all his treatments must be paid out of pocket.

“It’s getting hard on them, of course,” his sister said. “They had a little bit of savings but now that’s gone.” She added that they’ve applied for disability and social services but haven’t been approved yet.

Her brother has regained balance and feeling in the right side of his body. He can walk. But he struggles with his memory and is mostly unable to communicate.

“We try to be as positive as possible,” she said. “We try to always be with him. I go over to their house and I try to talk to him as much as I can because that’s what’s going to help him.”

He’s been diagnosed with apraxia of speech, a neurological condition where a person knows what they want to say but is unable to produce speech. She says her brother has also been battling depression since the pandemic, when their father died after contracting Covid-19. He was 63.

“These couple of years… they have been hard on the whole family,” she said. “But we’re trying. We’re trying to be strong.”

The Making Change program enabled her to donate $1,000 to help her brother’s family.

“I want people to know that if we’re helping people, this is a good way,” she said. “This is a great thing for all of us, to think of someone that’s really needing the money. I’m really happy that we’re doing it as a bank.”