With sick child & gutted house, Lexington officer’s family gets help this holiday
Detective Joe Holland and his wife, Maegan Holland, are used to helping others.
He’s an Army veteran who has worked for the Lexington Police Department for nearly 16 years, and she’s a registered nurse at Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center.
Now, the community is rallying to help them this holiday season as they muddle through a series of life events that have left their family struggling medically, financially and emotionally.
The Hollands’ younger son Kaiser, now 6, was diagnosed two years ago with a degenerative seizure disorder.
“It’s a really rare form of epilepsy that causes brain damage,” Maegan Holland said. “He lost his ability to speak. He lost his ability to potty train. We kind of got him back from that.”
But the nature of his illness means that his medicines sometimes stop working, and the effects of the seizures present as autism, she said. He has suffered setbacks recently.
In October, Kaiser got a feeding tube, which came with a new set of complications.
Maegan Holland has had to take leave from her nursing job to care for him, and now her leave has run out, causing new challenges for the family’s future.
“That’s enough already for a lifetime,” said Joe Holland’s police department coworker, Detective Anthony Delimpo.
But on top of the health issues and job concerns, the family has also had major problems with housing that have left them living in a tiny camper.
In the summer of 2019, water got into their Harrodsburg home during a series of heavy, driving rains, they said. Battles with their insurance company ensued. Black mold developed, and they said the house had to be gutted.
The family moved into a hotel, then a rental home. Then, around Christmastime last year, they said their insurance company stopped paying for their temporary housing expenses.
Ultimately, they got a 300-square-foot camper and parked it in the driveway at their home. They’ve been living in it while engaged in a legal dispute with the home insurance company.
They do laundry in the basement of their house and prepare meals in the garage, where they had the refrigerator and stove moved because of the conditions in the upstairs portion of the house.
On top of medical bills, they said they’re paying utilities for the house and the camper, as well as the mortgage and insurance on their unlivable house.
“They have no money left,” Delimpo said.
Recently, Delimpo said he was talking with Maegan Holland, who was worried about how they’d make it if she is unable to return to work soon.
That was when Delimpo said he knew he had to act.
“This has gone way too far,” he said. “I have got to do something to help this family.”
He and Holland worked together in the police department’s auto crimes unit for three years, and Delimpo has gone through his own struggles with a very sick child. His son Levi has battled Ewing sarcoma, a rare bone cancer.
“The department carried me through it,” he said.
He hopes to return the favor.
Delimpo, who coordinates Lexington’s Crimestoppers program, said members of the board and individual Lexington police officers together donated a total of $7,000.
On Friday, Delimpo set up a GoFundMe account for public donations, and by Monday afternoon, it had raised more than $24,000.
The police department shared a FOX 56 news story about the Hollands Saturday with the message, “One of our police families is hurting this holiday season.”
Maegan Holland said she recently received treatment after having a breakdown.
“There are times when everything seems to be closing in around you,” she said. “You just can’t see anything good out of it.”
The couple said their older son, who is 8, has also started to struggle emotionally. Virtual schooling in the COVID-19 pandemic has left him with no place to escape the troubles at home.
“We try to keep a positive outlook ... but as it’s drug on, he’s questioning ... why God’s doing this,” Joe Holland said.
But Maegan Holland said the donations over the past few days provided some comfort. If she loses her job, they now have a cushion.
“Just knowing that it’s there is extremely stress-relieving,” she said. “It takes that pressure off... It gives me and Joe longer to find a solution.”
This story was originally published December 5, 2020 at 8:08 PM.
