Pratima Gupta, a co-founder of Helping Hands Silicon Valley, visits Mir Sayed, a 94-year-old blind man living at a Motel 6 in Sunnyvale, Calif., Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Every call for help is different. So Pratima Gupta didn’t know what was in store, when she answered a call from the front desk manager at the Motel 6 on Sunnyvale’s North Mathilda Avenue last winter.
The motel needed help with an elderly blind man, who could no longer pay for his room. The man would have to leave the next day, if a solution couldn’t be found, and he seemed to have nowhere else to go.
“They asked to come and help him for one night,” says Gupta, who is one of the co-founders of Helping Hands Silicon Valley (HHSV). “That was in December, and he has been our client ever since.”
In the months that followed, Gupta and the HHSV team — including co-founder Alpana Agarwal — have rallied around 94-year-old Mir Sayed and helped him receive not only housing but other critical services as well.
“This is so very important to me,” Sayed says of the assistance he receives from HHSV.
Sayed is one of the dozens of people in need being helped by Sunnyvale’s HHSV, a relatively new, volunteer-run nonprofit with a mission, the founders say, to “empower and uplift the most vulnerable in our community by providing comprehensive support, resources and opportunities to regain their independence and thrive.”
Practically speaking, that translates to providing motel rooms for a variety of reasons — while people are recovering from health issues, during inclement weather conditions and more — as well arranging rides to medical appointments and assisting with job searches. The organization runs a Saturday program focusing on food, hygiene and clothing, delivers hot meals to those in need and helps clients with the piles of paperwork involved in replacing lost social security cards, for example, and signing up for government services.
“There are all these challenges, and I don’t know how they would do it on their own.” Gupta says.
Through the Mercury News’ annual Wish Book campaign, which seeks to raise money for the most vulnerable in our communities, HHSV is hoping to raise $30,000 to help provide 250 nights of room and board for their clients. Specifically, they want to find lodging for 10 to 14 seniors living outdoors during the estimated 20 to 25 days of inclement weather in a year. The funds will also be used to support medical needs and provide food, clothing and more for clients of the nonprofit.
HHSV got its start in 2020 in response to the homeless encampments that began springing up during the early days of the pandemic. Gupta and Agarwal connected on the popular Nextdoor app, amid the flurry of neighborhood comments about the situation, and decided to do something to help.
“Pretty soon we were providing meals every day,” Agarwal says.
Not all their neighbors were thrilled with what Gupta and Agarwal were doing — and they let their feelings be known by making some pretty un-neighborly comments online.
“There will always be people like that,” Gupta reasons. “’If you feed (the homeless), they will come,’ that’s what I would hear.”
Undeterred, the two women ramped up their plans and officially formed the nonprofit organization in 2021.
They soon realized that Sunnyvale was ill-equipped to deal with the situation and offered what they deemed to be far fewer services for the homeless than many other Bay Area cities. Most glaringly, many residents seemed to be in denial that a problem like this could even exist in such an affluent area.
“People didn’t believe us that there were homeless in Sunnyvale,” Gupta says.
From two women trying to make a difference in their own neighborhood, HSSV has expanded. Today, the group helps as many as 70 clients at a time with the assistance of some 20 volunteers working throughout Sunnyvale as well as in parts of Santa Clara, San Jose and Cupertino.
The organization is still small enough to treat its clients as individuals — not numbers. That’s certainly the case when it comes to Sayed.
For one thing, the HSSV folks definitely know what he likes to eat.
“He loves Burger King,” Agarwal says. “Burger and onion rings — that’s his favorite meal.”
HHSV pays for Sayed to get his food delivered every day from the Burger King next to the Motel 6, and sends a volunteer to check in on Sayed every day.
“She makes his tea,” Agarwal says. “She talks to him. She lets us know how he is doing.”
Perhaps most importantly, HHSV has covered the cost to keep him in the same room — at that same Motel 6 where Gupta first met him — since March. That’s a huge deal for Sayed. Besides being blind, he suffers from severe hearing and memory loss and grows anxious and agitated at the very thought of having to get accustomed to a new living space.
“It was traumatic for him — and for us,” Gupta says of the times when Sayed had to move between motels and rooms.
These days, Sayed seems pretty comfortable and content as he sits on the bed in his motel room and talks with HHSV volunteer Rose Gregorio, who he refers to as “Rosebud.”
“It would be very hard for me do things if she was not here,” Sayed says of Rosebud. “I thank God she is here.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Helping Hands Silicon Valley would like to provide 250 nights of room and board for their clients, specifically lodging for 10 to 14 seniors living outdoors during an estimated 20 to 25 days of inclement weather in a year. The funds also will be used to support medical needs and provide food, clothing and more for clients of the nonprofit. Goal: $30,000.
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com/donate or mail in this form.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com.