Photo Courtesy of Jackie Herships Clarke McCarthy, left, and Sandy Goodman outside McCarthy’s home.
SOUTH ORANGE — Clarke McCarthy has had a rough year.
She lost her husband, a Vietnam veteran on disability last January, and then she became sick and needed a double mastectomy in April.
When the temperature control in the shower in her home’s main bathroom stopped working, she and her two daughters just started using the shower in the basement.
The actress and voiceover performer was a client of Homeowners Hub, a home concierge service that handles maintenance and repair issues. She also happens to be a neighbor of its owner, Sandy Goodman.
“Sandy was here, looking at the house,” McCarthy said. “She saw we had a problem with our plumbing. It was a significant problem, I had just been diagnosed with cancer and my husband had died earlier in the year.”
McCarthy has owned the home, where she lives with her two daughters, since 1999. She’s been a client of Homeowners Hub, which takes care of household issues like plumbing problems.
“They negotiate with contractors,” McCarthy said. “If there is an issue, you talk to them, not the contractor.”
Goodman stepped in and contacted D&R, which is owned by Ron Steele and they took down the old wall in the bathroom. Brinks Contracting Services, based in Hillside, followed them and installed a new shower before D&R returned and put the wall back together.
“Once we realized the shower was not repairable and needed to be replaced, I reached out to a couple of trade affiliates that I work with and was able to have a new shower installed for free,” Goodman said. “Through the program called the Pro Bono Project along with my company Homeowners Hub, we have done this type of work a number of times throughout the community. When a homeowner is recuperating from a serious illness and needs help to make their home safer and more comfortable, we do our best to provide the needed repair for free.”
All the work was done gratis and now the McCarthys have a second floor bathroom with a working shower. No more trips to the basement for a washup.
“It was going to be a big problem,” McCarthy said. “We had a shower in the basement so we were making due but Sandy was like, ‘Nope.’”
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