Published October 2004

Donor Closet’s volunteers
keep clients moving

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Situated on Highway 99, inside a dozen 10-foot-by-20-foot units of an Edmonds self-storage facility, is the Donor Closet, a program that recycles donated wheelchairs, walkers and other mobility equipment to people who might otherwise go without.

Snohomish County Business Journal file photo Bob Chisholm repairs one of the wheelchairs donated to the Donor Closet. Chisholm and fellow volunteers Gary Turcott, Craig Rubins, Mike Bemis, Roger Oliver, Russ Johnson, Pat Reed and Ralph Larson make the Donor Closet work, Director Bill Brayer said.

An arm of the nonprofit Multiple Sclerosis Helping Hands, the Donor Closet started a few years ago as a service to the MS community but has grown to include others with mobility problems, said Bill Brayer, program director.

“We’re a people-oriented organization — people helping people,” Brayer said, noting that the program is run solely by volunteers who repair donated items as well as staff the Donor Closet, located inside Armadillo Self Storage, at 23031 Highway 99, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Item donations to the Donor Closet come from all quarters: care centers that want to dispose of older hospital beds or walkers; relatives of a deceased person who may have used an electric scooter, bathtub transfer bench or other equipment; and individuals, businesses and other nonprofit organizations who support the cause.

“We’ve received funds from the Boeing Employees Community Fund and United Way. Frontier Bank of Lynnwood also has been very supportive of us,” Brayer said.

“We are getting more and more public support and help all the time,” he added.

Testimony to such community support can be seen in the storage units, which are lined with electric and manual wheelchairs, walkers, scooters, hospital beds and a variety of lifts, safety rails and other equipment.

The donated items the program receives are repaired and refurbished before being made available, at a fraction of their original cost, to needy clients, whose monetary donations go toward purchasing more equipment and parts, Brayer said.

Since October 1999, the program has placed more than 10,000 pieces of donated equipment in the hands of those in need, he said. For more information on the Donor Closet, call 206-718-0426, send e-mail to WBrayer@mshelp.org or visit online at www.mshelp.org.

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