EVANS CITY — A nurse and her police chief husband have helped provide medical care for the world's most impoverished people for nearly three decades.

In the mid 1980s, Jeanne Westerman heard Third World missionaries, who visited her church, Westminster United Presbyterian in Evans City, report that even the most basic medical supplies, instruments and equipment are almost impossible to find in the most poverty-stricken areas of the globe.

The missionaries lamented the waste at American hospitals and said items tossed in the trash here would be like gold to clinics in Haiti, Korea and other poor countries.

Westerman, who works in an emergency department, began taking notice of the good items thrown away at work each day. She said they included a suture pack that was not used, so she began collecting the hemostats, tiny scissors and other untouched items from the packs.

“I started keeping them, thinking there has to be someone who needs them,” Westerman said.

When missionaries from Haiti came to give a presentation at her church, Westerman took the shoebox full of instruments with her to show them. She explained that although they were untouched by doctors or nurses, they would have been thrown away.

“They were flabbergasted,” Westerman said of the missionaries' reaction. “They said there were more scissors in that box than in their entire hospital.”

Westerman handed the instruments over to them, but the missionaries were afraid the precious cargo would be seized during the customs process. So they wrapped them in socks and placed them inside shoes in one of two large bags of shoes.

Customs agents searched one bag of shoes, and it was not the one containing the medical instruments.

“God works in mysterious ways,” said Westerman.

Through her women's association at Westminster, Westerman then heard about a mission in Erie that collects medical items for shipment to clinics in Third World countries.

That was in 1986, and Jeanne and her husband, Adams Township Police Chief Bill Westerman, have taken at least one pickup truckload of items to the mission every year since.

She said the large pole-building facility, CHOSEN Mission Projects, takes all kinds of medical equipment, supplies, instruments and even medical school textbooks, then cleans, sorts, repairs or refurbishes them for shipment to the neediest clinics on Earth.

She said a group of men retired from a sterilizer plant in Erie work on sterilizers to repair them or convert them from electric to gas power for clinics without electricity.

She said doctors in the Erie area research the medical curriculum used in parts of the world, then come to the mission to sort through the donated medical books and catalog them for shipment to the areas they will prove the most beneficial.

“What we would look at as old and outdated may not be to doctors in other parts of the world,” Westerman said.

Other items shipped overseas by CHOSEN, which stands for Christian Hospitals Overseas Secure Equipment Needs, include gauze, IV equipment and tubes, bassinets, surgical tables and equipment, overhead lights, defibrillators, crutches and walkers.

“Anything but medications or solutions,” Jeanne Westerman said.

The Westermans' friends and neighbors learned about their annual trips to Erie, and the donations started rolling in. Westerman said she has an area in her basement where she sorts, boxes and stores the items until their trip north in July.

While many items have been left on her porch, she and her husband have picked up larger items.

And one donation stands out in her mind. Westerman recalls a woman contacted her and said her mother had died.

“She said 'I have my mother's legs,'” Westerman said. “She said 'I couldn't bury them with her.'”

Westerman drove to the woman's home in West View and left with a pair of prosthetic lower legs wrapped in sheets. She said they were sent overseas.

“I treat these items with a lot of respect,” Westerman said. “Many of them are so personal to people.”

Another woman contacted Jeanne upon the death of her father, who was a doctor in Butler. The family was cleaning out his office and wanted to donate his supplies and equipment. Westerman accepted all the medical equipment, then the doctor's daughter approached her cradling one last item.

“It was his doctor's bag, which was very personal to the family,” she said. “I took it to CHOSEN, and I'm sure it was put to good use somewhere.”

In another donation, an ambulance service wanted to unload a 15-year-old defibrillator. The service was unsure if the unit would be any good to anyone, but a call to CHOSEN by Westerman revealed the group would be able to get the rare battery required to make the instrument work.

“CHOSEN sent me a picture of the refurbished defibrillator, and I showed that to the people who had donated it,” Westerman said.

She said all manner of medical items have shown up on her porch, including canvas cots, dental instruments, backboards and plaster of Paris casting material.

“They are things you and I would look at and think 'Who could use this?'” Westerman said. “But many of these folks have nothing to start with. It's absolutely golden to them.”

She said hospitals occasionally contact her to donate outdated books or equipment.

“One donated a whole cardiac catheterization lab,” she said.

The Westermans are gearing up for a trip to Erie at the end of the month, where they will deliver a full pickup truck and small trailer full of items to CHOSEN. After that, they will take their three grandchildren to the beach at Presque Isle.

“It just makes you feel good that these things are sent overseas to help people,” she said. “They get a second life.”

Elaine Hixson, director of finances at CHOSEN Mission Projects, said some of the home-care items donated by the Westermans are given to uninsured or under insured people in the Erie area who are receiving care at home. She said walkers, canes, crutches and other items are picked up by home health care nurses for delivery to needy patients there.

“What the Westermans bring helps out not only people in our community, but overseas as well,” said Hixson. “Very few people for that long a period of time and from that great of a distance are willing to do that.

“It's a very generous outreach they've been doing, and we appreciate it a lot.”

Information on CHOSEN is available at www.chosenmissionproject.com.

To donate items for the Westermans' trip to Erie, call Jeanne Westerman at 724-538-9102.