After a car wreck on I-277, single mom in Charlotte finds holiday help and hope
Raquel Tate is hopeful and smiling, even though she’s had a rough couple of months.
In early September, the Charlotte woman got into a wreck at night on Interstate 277. She broke a cervical bone in her neck, and about a month later underwent surgery to remove and replace a herniated disk with a titanium piece. She now has screws in her neck and has worn a neck brace since the accident.
But the single mom to two kids, whose friends call her “Rock,” is used to facing challenges.
And for help around the holidays for her younger child, 6-year-old Noble, she’s turning to a familiar resource — the Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte’s Angel Tree program.
The program matches thousands of children in need with anonymous donors who buy them presents for Christmas. In cases where donors don’t step up, Charlotte Observer readers cover the expense by giving to the Empty Stocking Fund, which the Observer has sponsored since about 1920.
Tate’s older child, Nola, has benefited in the past from the program, but has aged out of it at 13.
Following the accident, Tate was expected to spend at least two days in the hospital, but pushed for an earlier discharge so she could get back to her children. She went home after about 16 hours at the hospital.
“I think the best thing for me was to keep moving,” Tate said. “I came home to my kids in the house, out of the hospital. I was still a parent, I never got to stop being a parent… To me, it was a normal day with a neck brace now.”
She said she was diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic about 14 years ago, and relies on monthly disability payments to survive. Tate takes medication and sees a psychiatrist regularly but has been unable to find work, even after trying with the help of a job placement agency.
But despite these difficulties, she said the car accident helped her see things in a new way.
“I think I walked out of the accident a little more thankful, a little more grateful and excited about life,” she said. “I have very gifted children — beautiful, gifted children. Nola is also a rapper. She has (a) big personality… She likes kid-friendly music, she’s big on that. And Mr. Noble, he’s just a dinosaur wizard.”
Help from Angel Tree and Empty Stocking Fund
Tate is thankful for the Angel Tree program because it helps people like her who have “run into bad times.”
“It gives our kids a chance to open something on Christmas day with a smile on their face and they can feel like everyone else.”
Last season, Observer readers donated $143,681 to the campaign. That money raised by the 2023 Empty Stocking Fund campaign allowed The Salvation Army to buy more than 6,100 toys for this year’s campaign, along with gift cards for seniors, foster children and adults with disabilities, Salvation Army officials said.
The 2024 Angel Tree program will help 1,627 families in Mecklenburg and Union counties this holiday season, representing 3,850 children. The program also is providing gift cards to 1,261 seniors and 277 people with disabilities, according to The Salvation Army.
What the kids are hoping for
This year, Noble would love a new bike, and toys related to Jurassic Park, Godzilla, King Kong or Transformers. He’s eager to have a tablet, too. Perhaps he’d use it to learn more about dinosaurs.
Noble can already identify many of the prehistoric creatures shown in toys and books, tell you how to pronounce their names and the foods they ate.
“I call him my paleontologist,” Tate added. “That’s what he said he was gonna be.”
Nola really wants an iPad, something that Tate planned to save money for this fall before she got into the wreck.
“She really was kind of feeling like she had to sacrifice this year because I was in an accident,” said Tate, who still hopes to find a way to get her that or something similar to make her Christmas wish come true. “It might not be the pretty, pretty pink one she wants but we can make it happen,” Tate said.
With family out of town, Tate is grateful for the support she gets from close family friends, Wendy and John Marus. Tate and her children will spend Christmas morning with the couple and their four grown children.
Tate hopes she’ll be out of her neck brace by Christmas and will have the chance to gather in the afternoon with some of her own family at her mom’s home in Kannapolis. Her older sister lives in Atlanta and a younger one, whom Tate helped raise, is finishing up her senior year of college in Winston-Salem.
Giving and receiving help
Tate also loves helping others. That’s what she does for the older neighbors in the public housing community in which she lives.
“Not being able to be around my family so much, like my parents and my siblings, I love finding older people to help,” she said.
She regularly checks on neighbors to see if they need assistance with anything or a ride to the store. Lately, things have been different.
“Since I’ve been injured, those same older, elderly people, they were bringing me food, they were, you know, asking, did I need something from the pharmacy? I thought that was beautiful.”
How to donate to the Empty Stocking Fund
To donate online, visit Empty Stocking Fund CLT.org.
To donate by mail, send checks to: The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte, PO Box 31128, Charlotte NC 28231. Make checks payable to The Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte and write “Empty Stocking Fund” in the memo line.
Questions concerning your donation? Call 704-334-4731