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GoFundMe set up for former Maple Ridge council candidate

Grover Telford ran for city council in the last three elections
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Grover Telford. (Contributed)

A GoFundMe page has been set up for Grover Telford who ran for council the past three municipal elections, after undergoing emergency heart surgery four days ago.

Telford fell ill on Oct. 7 and was admitted to Ridge Meadows Hospital and diagnosed with pneumonia and methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus or MRSA. MRSA is bacterium found on the nose or on the skin of three out of ten healthy people, but can cause serious infections if it enters into or through the skin. MRSA bacteria have become resistant to some antibiotics.

After two weeks on antibiotics Telford was transferred to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster where it was discovered his heart valve had to be replaced.

Then, on Oct. 22, Telford went into heart failure and the cardiac surgeon had to perform emergency heart surgery.

Telford was given a 50/50 chance to make it through the surgery and a high risk of brain damage due to two brain bleeds he had suffered and a series of small strokes due to the MRSA attacking his heart.

Although he made it through without brain damage, his left leg is not functioning and he is still extremely ill with the MRSA.

Telford is the owner of Able Home Services, a home repair and cleaning service, and ran three times for Maple Ridge City Council; in the 2008 municipal election, the 2011 election and the 2014 election, each time coming up short.

He has sat on the Ridge Meadows Seniors Society board, on the district’s social planning advisory committee, and was a minor soccer coach.

In an interview in June this past year Telford expressed interest in running again in the Oct. 20 election and commented that in his opinion Mayor and council in Maple Ridge should not receive pay increases of 20 per cent to off set federal changes in tax laws, a motion passed unanimously at the time.

Telford’s wife, Barbara Carlsen Offerhaus, doesn’t know when she can expect her husband home again or if he will even be able to walk.

“Grover lost his first wife to cancer in 2002 and he had to keep working. He is the hardest working man I have ever met and he would give the shirt off his back to anyone,” wrote Offerhaus on the GoFundMe page.

“The last two years have been hard financially as the work truck kept breaking down and what money he had saved went into the truck so he could have an income. He is self employed, has no savings, no short term or long term disability,” she wrote.

Offerhaus expects Telford will need money to get through the next four to six months and will need her full-time help in the process.

She is trying to raise $10,000. So far $375 of the goal has been raised by seven people.

“My goal is to get my husband better. I would be grateful for any amount that you feel you can afford.”

To donate go to gofundme.com.



Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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