Maria Gavrau, a 61 year-old Romanian immigrant who’s lived in her Dearborn home for 18 years, is facing foreclosure after a severe fall on the sidewalk outside her home in April left her injured, causing her to lose her job as a custodian.                                  PHOTO: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN

DEARBORN — A group of neighbors is rallying behind a Romanian American woman facing foreclosure on her home, where she’s lived for 18 years and never missed a house payment until losing her job after a disabling fall in April.
While on her way to Joe and Ed’s, a Middle Eastern grocery store that she walks to every day, Maria Gavrau, 61, tripped and fell on an elevated sidewalk slab near her home on Calhoun Street, one block north of Ford Road in east Dearborn.

She was knocked unconscious and suffered several breaks and fractures in her left arm and right knee.

After four months of medical leave, still unable to work, she lost her job as a custodian for Omni Facility Services at the AAA Michigan General Offices on Auto Club Drive, where she worked for 18 years.

Gavrau can’t afford physical therapy or an MRI for her arm, which is still visibly swollen. She has been rejected for unemployment benefits because she’s not fully capable of working.

After a few months of leniency from Wells Fargo bank because Gavrau was never late on a payment, she came home from church one Sunday afternoon and found a foreclosure notice on her door.

“They cannot wait until Monday,” Gavrau said. “I was so upset.”

The home is scheduled to be sold at auction on Nov. 12.

Her lawyer said she’s yet not old enough for Medicare or Social Security and that he’s appealing the unemployment rejection, but Gavrau’s only hope of ensuring funds in time to save her home is reaching a speedy settlement with the city, which they have sued for $25 million.

An elavated sidewalk slab near Gavrau’s home caused her disabling fall in April.

“The 25 million was to get the attention, said attorney Rick Martin. “By the time the lawsuit would be resolved, she’d be homeless.”
Before filling the suit, Martin offered the city a settlement for $250,000, citing lost wages and pain and suffering, then raised it to $450,000, saying Gavrau would lose more wages than initially thought because she would have remained a custodian well into her 70’s, the job not offering retirement benefits.

The city of Dearborn rejected the offer, saying it was too high.

City spokesperson Mary Laundroche said that because of the pending lawsuit, she couldn’t say much about the case, but that the settlement offer was “unreasonable and excessive.”

“To put this in perspective, the last two lawsuits over trip and fall cases were settled for $500 and $4,500. This case is continuing to trial at this point,” she said.

Martin said Gavrau’s case demands a larger settlement because it involves the loss of a job and permanent injury.

He said the city could do more to attempt to reach a settlement.

“They refuse to give a counteroffer.”

A state statute requires city’s to keep sidewalks “in reasonable repair,” and a state Supreme Court decision holds cities liable when neglect results in injury.

According to several neighbors, the elevated slab wasn’t fixed until mid-October, six months after Gavrau fell. They said many had tripped on the sidewalk and that repeated complaints were ignored for months.

Laundroche said that the city has an aggressive sidewalk replacement program done on an annual basis in rotating sections across Dearborn, and that it maintains 18 million square feet of sidewalk, replacing at least 8,800 flags of sidewalk each year.

The neighbors, several of whom did not want to be identified, saying they didn’t want to antagonize the city, said an overzealous inspector, until recently, constantly roamed the neighborhood, giving them tickets for things like their grass being too long, but never got that sidewalk fixed.

Talib Al-Khekani, who lives down the street from Gavrau, said he’s received several citations from the inspector, often for violations he never understood.

He said his five year old son was overjoyed when the elevated slab was finally fixed, because he no longer had to get off his bike and walk it across the flaw when he rode down the street.

“She’s a sweet lady,” Al-Khekani said about Gavrau. “She’s very nice. I feel sorry about the poor lady… That’s terrible.”

He also said another house nearby was recently foreclosed on, and that he worried about the value of his own home going down as a result.

Gavrau said that the day after her fall, the same inspector left a citation on her door for a flaw on one of her porch steps.

The inspector’s name was illegible on a copy of a citation provided by Gavrau.

“We believe the inspector even tripped over that thing,” said Martin about the sidewalk elevation, which he said was three inches high.

Laundroche said that the inspector is included in the lawsuit, and that she couldn’t comment on him.

Gavrau said that one good thing has come out of her ordeal.

“The inspector don’t come anymore,” she said. “That inspector was not nice at all.”

Martin said he hopes to gather a group of the angry and sympathetic neighbors at a City Council meeting on Monday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m. to help try to convince city officials to expedite the settlement process.

“This is a case where the city knows they’re going to have to pay. It’s just a matter of when,” Martin said.

If a deal is reached in time, he said, “then I could use that settlement to call Wells Fargo bank.”

Ismail Saab, a manager at Joe and Ed’s, said Gavrau visits the store almost every day, and that he’d be sad to hear that she lost her home.

“She’s a wonderful lady. She doesn’t deserve it. I’ve heard so much about people losing their houses… She’s one of the best citizens in the town,” he said.

He said she’s always letting people in line in front of her at the store.

“If somebody deserves a break, I think she does.”