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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Special Report: February 2009
Upcountry Commitment
Amador center gives families a boost
Story by Christine Stanley
The move was tough enough. With his wife and 13-year-old daughter in tow, Jay Ollig picked up his San Jose business and relocated to Amador County’s tiny Pine Grove where he’d purchased land and planned to build a home. They hadn’t even settled before the plummet began.
“On Dec. 26, 2004 I had a seizure and started having headaches 24/7. I pretty much had to shut down my company. I was incapable of performing any kind of task, and the doctors weren’t sure what was going on,” he says. The next year followed with more seizures and more questions surrounding his diagnosis.
Ollig’s wife, René, held her family together with what resources she had, but with an ailing mother, an unemployed spouse and the loss of her Bay Area core group, just hanging on seemed impossible.
“There was no money and nothing else,” Ollig says. The family spent its retirement funds to stay afloat. “I did what I could, but simple things like fixing a bathroom faucet, I couldn’t do. The physical pain was excruciating, and during that time I started drinking — a lot.”
At that point a friendly neighbor stepped in. Ruthella Turner manages the sparsely funded Upcountry Community Center on Highway 88 through grants, donations and volunteers. The center opened in 2003, becoming a one-stop shop for area social services. Before then, the closest services were at least 10 miles away in Jackson.
Turner estimates her nonprofit, which operates on about $100,000 under the 501(c)(3) arm of the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency, assists more than 100 families each month. Services include domestic violence protection, Gambler’s Anonymous and a group for cancer survivors.
The San Francisco-based S.H. Cowell Foundation provides most of the center’s funding as part of a grant split between services in Amador, Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. Of the $90,000 provided by the grant, $40,000 goes to Pine Grove. United Way gives another $25,000 and First 5 Amador, which supports early childhood development services, gives $20,000.
The money is used to help people like Ollig. “Somehow Ruthella got involved, and we started working through some of our problems,” Ollig says. “I started getting involved a bit with the community center. Ruthella would work with my wife, the food bank, counselors and all sorts of things that could assist my family.”
Four years after his first seizure, Ollig is doing much better. His health is returning and, thanks to programs at the UCC, he’s been sober for several months. He’s been applying for jobs and was asked to sit on the Upcountry Community Center’s board of directors.
