Karla Krueger
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Transcript: “My name is Karla Krueger, and I work for the Legal Aid office that serves Central Minnesota. I work with the Senior Project, so all the clients that I serve are 60 and over.
I grew up in a family that was very poor. I was one of the first kids that went to Head Start. Our family lived in subsidized housing. We got food support. I lived with a stepfather who was abusive. So I kind of lived the life that a lot of our clients did.
It’s especially interesting to work with older people and hearing their life stories. There’s a lot of challenges. Sometimes older people are experiencing dementia or other related mental health problems. We’ve seen a lot of clients who are losing their housing due to foreclosures … just being on a more limited income, trying to figure out how to pay for housing and health care and food and medication and all the things that they need.
The one that kind of sticks in my mind is the woman who came in, an elderly woman who was very poor, and she used the bus to get around. And the bus company told her she couldn’t ride the bus anymore because she smelled. They told her she couldn’t ride the bus! I don’t know how she was supposed to do any of the things that she needed to do. She didn’t have a car, so the bus was her only way to get around. So I looked at the statute that governed the bus company and was able to find that before they can enact a rule like that, they have to first create a statement of need and reasonableness. And they hadn’t done that. And so they had to let her back on the bus.
We’re not here because we’re making millions of dollars or looking for fame or notoriety. We’re really here just to try to make things better for other people. Oftentimes people get better representation from us than they would from someone they’re paying $200 an hour for.”
