A Slide From Benefactor to Betrayer

PRINCETON, Ill. —  Tina Albright was an 18-year-old college student when she learned about life, death and the kindness of strangers.

The lesson that hurts is one about betrayal, taught by the stranger who had become her savior.

Three years ago, Albright had just months to live. She desperately needed a liver transplant but lacked money to pay for it.

In walked Jerry Blanford.

His own liver transplant 10 years earlier had been big news in the towns that dot the pancake-flat cornfields of north-central Illinois. He knew about the agony of fatal liver disease and the generosity of local people--they had helped pay for his transplant.

Someone asked Blanford to help Albright, and he was more than willing.

“At that time everyone wanted to take credit that they asked him,” Albright said, her dark eyes flashing. “Now no one does.”

These days, Blanford, 39, is behind bars, serving a four-year sentence for stealing nearly $100,000 from Albright’s medical fund.

She still got a new liver, but she lost something irreplaceable: trust. Gone is that youthful vision that sees the world in black and white, where good guys never turn bad and happy endings aren’t shaded with sorrow.

Albright was a freshman at a community college in January 1994 when her world began to crumble. Doctors ordered tests to determine why treatment for her irregular periods was causing incessant bleeding.

The diagnosis was hepatitis. It was expected to kill her within two years.

Insurance from her father’s job as a heavy-equipment operator would not cover a liver transplant, and time was running out.

“As a mother, you’re supposed to be able to take care of your child,” Dixie Albright said, choking back tears.

She recalled the night when she had nearly abandoned hope.

“We had to be together, we had to touch each other,” she said. So mother and daughter spread sleeping bags in the family’s living room and slept side by side.

“I said, ‘Tina, I’m going to turn you over to God,’ ” Dixie Albright recalled. “God did take care of it.”

With help from Jerry Blanford.

The Albrights met Blanford, a state agriculture inspector, shortly after Tina’s diagnosis.

“I instantly felt that he was there to help me,” Tina Albright recalled.

Tall, balding and gregarious, Blanford came from the nearby farm town of Sheffield, population 1,600, where everyone seemed to know his name.

With Blanford’s help, the curly-haired young woman with the bright smile became a cause celebre in Bureau County.

In prosperous Princeton, Albright’s hometown, residents eagerly responded when asked to help. Dozens of businesses set out coffee cans seeking donations. Kids hawking Kool-Aid on sidewalks brought the Albrights their pennies. Letters from strangers, containing checks or cash, arrived at the family’s home daily.

Blanford collected it all and made deposits to medical funds at two banks. He helped organize a fund-raiser so crowded it had to be moved from a tavern to the county fairgrounds.

Within a few months, about $133,000 was raised, more than enough to pay for the transplant Albright received in July 1994.

“It was awesome,” Albright said.

The state eventually agreed to pay for the transplant, but the fund paid for related expenses. What money was left was earmarked to help cover the lifetime of medical bills Albright would still face.

Blanford offered emotional help too. He told Albright how she would feel after her operation, how her medication would cause leg cramps. He visited her in the hospital and brought her roses.

“I loved him. I told everybody what a great guy he was,” Albright said. “I felt like he’d do anything for me.”

Albright recovered, and though her medication sapped her energy and she left college, she got an apartment and started discussing marriage with her boyfriend.

Meanwhile, things weren’t going well for Blanford. Anti-rejection medicine was decimating his kidneys. Diabetes also was a taking a toll.

Last year, he went on disability and dialysis. When told he needed a kidney transplant, he sought help from the Albrights.

At one benefit, Tina recalled, “My mom stood up and gave a 10-minute speech telling what a great guy he was.” Then a bucketful of money was collected for Blanford and auctioned off.

“We bought the bucket and then gave him the cash,” Albright said. “I was in tears. My whole family was crying,” she recalled.

“I went up to hug him, and he didn’t hug me back. I kind of thought something was wrong, but I blew it off, thinking he was stressed.”

As the day of Blanford’s kidney transplant approached last fall, Albright’s mother wanted to know what remained in her daughter’s medical fund, in case Blanford died. (Patients and their families are barred from having direct contact with charitable funds set up for them.)

“I called him and said, ‘How does Tina’s account look?’ and he said, ‘Oh, fine, don’t worry about it.’ ”

“I asked him for copies of bank statements and checks,” she said, “and he kept putting me off.”

The few documents he finally provided raised her suspicions. When Dixie Albright went to the bank, she learned that Blanford had withdrawn more than $80,000.

When Blanford returned home from the transplant, Dixie Albright demanded an explanation. He balked, and she went to the county sheriff. Blanford was arrested Feb. 10 and charged with stealing $89,240 from the fund over almost three years.

Prosecutor Patrick Hermann said Blanford spent the money “for personal use,” but he would not elaborate.

Blanford, fired from his state job after he pleaded guilty, declined to comment, saying he is “a very sick man” and doesn’t want to be bothered.

But he was well enough to tend bar nightly at a tavern near his home in Sheffield while free on bond.

At Blanford’s sentencing May 15, Judge Scott Madson offered him a chance to explain.

Blanford responded quietly, “No sir,” before surrendering to begin serving his sentence.

His attorney, Michael Henneberry, only hints at what drove Blanford to steal.

“If your health was in question and you weren’t sure you were going to survive another month or two, the decisions you make might be different than those you would make if you were going to be alive 30 or 40 years,” he said.

At Sheffield’s Main Street Cafe, one grizzled lunchtime regular had no sympathy for Blanford.

“I want my $25 back,” the diner said, referring to money he had donated when Blanford needed his first transplant 13 years ago.

“Everyone hopes he gets his due,” said another resident.

In nearby Wyanet, Blanford’s mother, Flavia, struggles to understand.

“He just wasn’t raised that way,” she said. “It’s really broken his dad’s and my heart.”

Blanford first said he had used the money for medical expenses, but he had health insurance and his father helped pay for other bills, Dixie Blanford said.

“He has lied to us. I think that’s the most difficult thing to cope with,” she added.

Today, Albright can’t walk through Princeton without strangers stopping to wish her well.

“How’re ya feeling? You look great!” said a woman outside the county courthouse. Construction workers wave as she drives downtown.

Hate is too strong a word to use for how she feels about the man who helped save her life, but it is an emotion she struggles to keep in check.

“We loved him before we hated him,” she said. “He touched our lives so much, so it’s hard for us to hate him.”

“I feel sorry for the people in the community who gave their money and prayed for me . . . and then their money was taken,” she said. “It wasn’t just my trust; it was everybody’s.”