Donations Help Family Stave Off Eviction

Mohamed Soumah and his family will be able to stay in their Gaithersburg apartment for a while longer, thanks to donations they have received after their plight was described Tuesday in a Washington Post report.

Soumah, who works as a security guard but fell behind on expenses because of a period of unemployment, said he was grateful for the assistance. He said it will help his family begin to get back on its feet financially.

"I got some help. It has helped me a lot," Soumah said yesterday. He hopes to retrieve the family's belongings from storage, where he placed them after receiving an eviction notice last month.

Tina Webb, president of the PTA at Sequoyah Elementary School, where Soumah's 8-year-old son is a second-grader, is coordinating the delivery of the donations.

She said the family is among many at the school with "imminent needs."

"Too bad it can't be done for everybody, but every little bit counts," Webb said.

Rich Lane, a partner in a Washington real estate development firm, gave the Soumahs about $4,000, enough to meet their immediate expenses of about $3,000 in unpaid utility bills and about $1,000 in back rent.

"You read these stories, and you could probably write a hundred of these stories every day if you wanted to," he said. "Something struck a chord. It just isn't right. Here is a guy who is working hard, has a kid around my kid's age. I just thought it was the right thing to do. . . . I am not in it for the credit."

As the prospect of eviction loomed, Soumah and his wife, Barbara Doton, put most of their possessions in a storage unit and have been living with a mattress on the floor, a couple of lamps and little else.

The Soumahs had been sending their son Abdulaye downstairs to practice sleeping overnight with neighbors so that if the county sheriff's office came to evict them, he would have been able to get to his school nearby.

Lane's donation came a few hours before the sheriff's department was scheduled to arrive, and Webb said other gifts might be coming, too.