Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times  Janiya Spencer with her mother, Chonise Blackson, who worked at St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan for 23 years.  Ever since her high school took her on a college tour, Natalia Burks has had her heart set on going to Morgan State University in Baltimore to study forensic science. She has no connection to Baltimore, having grown up in subsidized housing on Edgecombe Avenue in West Harlem. But there was something about the romance of that tour that made Ms. Burks, now 18, believe she could go outside the customary boundaries of her life.  For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the centennial campaign, an article will appear daily through Feb. 10. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.  Last year, 10,457 donors contributed $6,061,024, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.  She took night remedial classes for six months so she could graduate on time with the rest of her class at Manhattan/Hunter Science High School, a small public school on the Upper West Side. She graduated in June, a year after her mother, Chonise Blackson, was laid off from St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, where she had worked for 23 years.  “ ‘I really want to make money, Ma,’ ” Ms. Blackson recalled her saying. “ ‘I want to get you out of here.’ ”  To which Ms. Blackson replied, “You get yourself out.”  Ms. Blackson is no longer able to provide as well as she once did for Natalia and her younger daughter, Janiya Spencer, who will turn 4 next week. She is still in disbelief that she no longer has her job at St. Vincent’s, where she started in 1987 as a file clerk in the medical records department and worked her way up to medical records analyst.  At the time she was laid off, she was assembling and preparing 75 to 200 paper charts a day, she said.  Although St. Vincent’s, founded in 1849, had flirted with bankruptcy for years, Ms. Blackson was not alone in fantasizing that someone would pull a last-minute rescue out of a hat. After all, this was the hospital that had responded to the sinking of the Titanic and the toppling of the World Trade Center. When it filed for bankruptcy in April 2010, it was the last full-service Roman Catholic hospital in New York City.  “I didn’t understand why the pope — he didn’t come out and do nothing,” Ms. Blackson said.  She had been laid off before. She got her job at St. Vincent’s through a temporary agency after being let go as a messenger on Wall Street in 1987, the year of Black Monday, when stock markets crashed around the world. But now, at 46, she is more than two decades older, with two children to care for and few skills to give her an edge in the job market.  When she interviewed at Continuum, a big hospital group in New York City, she was told that it did not employ medical records analysts. Other jobs she found through her union, 1199 S.E.I.U., would have required her to work a night shift — in two cases a long commute away in Brooklyn, and only part time.  Baby sitters wanted to charge her $125 a day to take care of Janiya. At that rate, Ms. Blackson said, she would be better off continuing to collect $315 a week in post-tax unemployment benefits.  Ms. Blackson is sociable, a trait that served her well at St. Vincent’s, where the nuns “adored” her, she said. When she took Janiya out to play in St. Nicholas Park, two blocks from her home, other children and mothers came over to greet her.  But she has had bad luck with men. Natalia’s father was in jail for many years, she said. When he got out, she said, he was given a diagnosis of mental illness. As for Janiya’s father, he got in with the wrong crowd, she said. She has filed a petition for child support but is thinking of dropping it because, she said, the judge has asked too many questions about her personal life.  “I wish I was married, but it just doesn’t happen,” she lamented.  As the months of unemployment wore on, Ms. Blackson struggled to afford laundry, toothpaste and toilet paper. She fell behind on her rent and racked up credit card bills by charging necessities at J. C. Penney. The Children’s Aid Society, which runs a preschool program that Janiya attended, stepped in to help. One of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, the organization granted her $1,301.80 to cover back rent. She also cut back on her cable service, giving up Encore and Cinemax, which showed too much sex for her taste anyway.  Since then, Natalia has taken a retailing job at an Ugg store. “She likes it because she likes Uggs,” said her mother, who is taking algebra and computer courses.  As she walked home from the park, wiping ice cream from Janiya’s chin, Ms. Blackson reflected on her two goals: a 9-to-5 job for herself and college for Natalia. Ms. Blackson has a mother’s faith in her daughter. “When she’s determined to do something,” she said, Natalia does it.
Chonise Blackson lost her job as St. Vincentâs Hospital Manhattan floundered, and then struggled to provide necessities for her two daughters.