Nearly homeless researcher helped into new apartment

Strangers, former colleagues help ailing scientist

By Ronald W. Powell
STAFF WRITER

January 4, 2006

The new year has brought with it a new home for Jo A. Del Rio, a scientific researcher whose medical problems left her unemployed and nearly homeless.

Sitting yesterday in her two-bedroom apartment in a wooded section of Tierrasanta, Del Rio credited the positive turn to her faith.

"I see it as one teeny miracle after another," Del Rio said through tears.

Former co-workers and strangers have responded to stories about Del Rio last month in The San Diego Union-Tribune with financial assistance and other help, including covering her rent for a year. Del Rio, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology, was a researcher at the Salk Institute and Merck & Co. before suffering a series of medical problems.

She has been hospitalized 16 times since March 2004, including for back surgery, a heart attack and a rare condition that causes excessive bleeding in her lungs. She relies on supplemental oxygenconstantly. One physician predicted in 2004 that she had two years to live.

Del Rio made $80,000 a year at Merck until January 2004, when she was laid off in a corporate downsizing. She could no longer work after her medical problems and she ran out of money last year, prompting her to take shelter in November at the San Diego Rescue Mission.

With the help of others, she is on her own again.

"I'm pleased," she said. "It's like being out in a forest here. The only thing you can hear is the birds in the trees."

Del Rio found the apartment last week, and workers from its management office moved her furniture from storage into the apartment over the New Year's Day weekend. Her rent is being paid by the founders of henrysworld.org, a Web site run out of La Jolla that originally detailed the rescue of a three-legged cat, a story that later morphed into a book.

In Del Rio's case, she was forced to place her cats in foster care before moving into the mission. The apartment allows animals, and she is living with her cats again.

She has used some of the donations to pay off the back rent, plus interest, her former landlord confirmed yesterday. Before entering the Rescue Mission, Del Rio had fallen behind in her rent.

She lives on $812 a month in Social Security insurance, using $375 of that for health insurance. With weekly doctor visits and other household expenses, Del Rio is concerned that finances will be tight.

But her faith gives her hope.

"We'll see how God plans to fulfill those needs," she said.

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