Animal activist Patsy Wagner – deprived of her furniture and appliances because of litigation that has nothing to do with her – is able to do her own washing again.
And that is because a Johannesburg-based cellphone company staffer – reading about her plight in The Herald this week – went to a retail store to buy her a washing machine after hers was seized by a sheriff of the court.
He was one of three good Samaritans whose concern for Wagner have meant the world to her.
“It’s not what you are, but who you are inside of you. There are still good-hearted people out there,” a grateful and teary-eyed Wagner, 70, said on Friday.
After a lifetime of charity work and having retired from the Animal Anti-Cruelty League earlier this year, Wagner suffered humiliation when a sheriff hauled furniture from her Kriel Street, Hillside, home for a debt involving her son-in-law.
First to step up to the plate was her cousin, Professor Jonathan Jansen, who promised to pay the cost of transporting the confiscated goods back to her home.
A Vodacom staffer who was on a regional visit to Port Elizabeth on Thursday said he came across an article about Wagner in The Herald.
“The last paragraph got to me, in which she said: ‘What I miss most is my washing machine. I have to pay someone to do my washing every week. I can no longer use my hands.’ I said I have been blessed and that I can do something to help,” said the man, who did not want to be named.
He looked up Wagner’s particulars on Facebook and immediately contacted her, discussing how he could help, after which he went to Makro and bought the washing machine.
“When I went to deliver it to her she was in tears. We must do things for each other. [It’s] the only way to make this country work,” he said.
Wagner said: “At first I thought this person was joking. Here is someone who does not know me and he is doing this. I could not stop crying when he arrived at my house with the toploader.”
But on Friday there was more good news for Wagner when Dirk Pettit Transport company offered to transport her goods from the sheriff back to her house.
“I am very excited. I am grateful to everyone for helping me,” she said.
Pettit said: “I read in the paper about Prof Jansen and said to myself I will do the transportation of the goods.”
The debt wrangle continues.