By Zach Patberg
Discovering that such relatives often relocate temporarily to be close to the hospital where their husbands, fathers or sons are recuperating, juniors Rikki Rubinfeld, 16, of Jamaica Estates, and Ariella Kaplan, 17, of Roslyn, L.I.. made it their mission to help them by supporting the boarding houses that give them beds.So almost every Sunday for the past five months, the two friends – armed with a fold-up card table, old shoe boxes and some empty coffee cans – parked their mobile donation station at various corners along Fresh Meadows' Union Turnpike in a grassroots effort to collect whatever people would give.That meant seeking out pocket change and low-digit checks while weathering the frigid snow of January, the rains of April and the sweltering heat of a coming summer.”It was a Little Rascals-type of thing,” said Stu Rubinfeld, Rikki's father. “Whatever free time they had, they did this.”On June 1, the two students at North Shore Hebrew Academy in Great Neck traveled to Washington, D.C. and handed around $3,200 to administrators at the Walter Reed Medical Center. The money was for the nearly two dozen families living temporarily in the facility's three subsidized residences. The free housing is run by the Fisher House Foundation, a nationwide private-public partnership founded in 1990 that offers relatives who cannot otherwise afford sublets or hotels a place to stay while their kin rehabilitate from severe combat injuries.For Rikki Rubinfeld, the desire to help the overseas heroes took hold following the deaths of thousands of heroes much closer to home. When her family lost a close relative in the Twin Tower attacks on Sept. 11, the feeling hit her and grew stronger. And when she noticed recently that attention toward Iraq seemed to be waning, it festered.”It's really been dying down,” she said, “like it's old news or something.”So she and Ariella Kaplan took matters in their own hands. Although many Fresh Meadows passersby readily contributed to the coffee cans, Stu Rubinfeld said there were some who thought the girls were raising money in support of the U.S. involvement in Iraq and criticized their motives.”They didn't understand that this was not a political thing,” he said. “It's not about the war, it's about helping the wounded and their families.” During their visit to Walter Reed, after surprising foundation officials with the money (the foundation had expected no more than $2,000), Rubinfeld and Kaplan met with the wounded and their families. Rubinfeld recalled one particularly inspiring moment when a soldier who lost his leg while fighting in Iraq told her he wanted to go back despite missing a limb and being a husband and father of two. “I feel so lucky to be in a country where people are putting their lives on the line everyday to protect us,” she said.Reach reporter Zach Patberg by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
