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the boys because the girls couldn’t keep up
with her,” Kaiser recalls, “to being wheeled
into Wilmington Health with some disease.
We had no idea what it was.”
Stacey was diagnosed with Lyme’s disease
and Kaiser’s focus shifted while he and his
wife cared for their daughter.
Years later, Kaiser was in his office
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
looking for a file.
“I opened up this drawer,” he
begins, “And the file that I had made three
years before was the only file I could see. It
was like it popped up. And I reached down
there and opened it up and rekindled the
whole concept of what I wanted to do.”
Three weeks later, in November 2007,
Kaiser and his wife Susan Kaiser were at
Wrightsville United Methodist Church
attending an alpha course. They broke into
small groups. There were 12 in Kaiser’s
group. The experience fanned a flame from
the spark he had carried in his mind for years.
“I just blurted it out,” he remembers,
“that this is what I’m going to do—not
what I want to do—this is what I’m going
to do.”
Susan admitted her surprise later to
her husband. But the group surrounding
Kaiser, including his wife, had faith in what
he brought to the table and jumped on
board.
“It was the right place and the right
time,” Kaiser says.
With the kindhearted help of his faith
community and the support of local
interior designers, remodeling teams and
in-kind donations, Kaiser founded the
501(c)(3) he calls Welcome Home Angel.
The nonprofit does essentially the
same thing that the inspiring “Extreme
Makeover: Home Edition” does, but for
low and middle-income families who live
within a 25-mile radius of Wilmington
(on a smaller scale) for children ages four
to 17 who have suffered a life-altering
illness or injury.
Today, celebrating Welcome Home
Angel’s four-year anniversary, Kaiser and
other volunteers are proud to have aided
more than a dozen families. Through renovations
like wheelchair ramp additions, or
modifying a home to meet ADA standards,
which make life easier for parents and
siblings, and by redesigning the children’s
rooms to make it their own, Kaiser has
made their homes, home again.
Little Lillian and Kaylee Pettigrew celebrated
their sixth birthdays on Oct. 4.
Mr. Kaiser shares a birthday with the twins,
although they were unaware of that fact
until recently.
But more serendipitous things have happened;
earlier in the year, Lillian’s physical
therapist called Kaiser asking for his help.
Six years and one month ago, Lillian
and Kaylee were born. Lillian came first
To learn more about
Welcome Home Angel, visit
www.welcomehomeangel.com