Customers in Alpharetta, Georgia, will often visit Ace Hardware Midway and ask employee "Uncle" Bob Evans for help. After he lost his son Jeffrey to a rare illness, Bob and his family set up the Jeffrey Campbell Evans Foundation to help patients and their caregivers in the Atlanta area, with the support of Gina and Darin Workman and their team at Ace.

Bob and Mary Evans lost their son Jeffrey at the age of 26. He had a promising career ahead of him, having established himself as a 4-star chef in the Atlanta area. Jeffrey contracted an unknown virus that attacked his heart, causing enough damage that he needed a transplant. Unfortunately, a suitable donor heart was not found in time to save Jeffrey’s life.

Devastated from their loss, the Evans family began to look for ways to ease their sorrow by helping others. Bob and Mary, along with their son Bradley, started the Jeffrey Campbell Evans Foundation. The organization provides housing for transplant patients and their caregivers to live in while recovering from the transplant experience.

"In the world of transplant organs, you cannot be transplanted unless you have a caregiver who is going to live with you 24/7," said Bob, Executive Director of the Jeffrey Campbell Evans Foundation. "The caregiver must step in and manage their own life, the patient’s life, the family’s life, the finances, the housing, and all these things that come into play. Our goal is to bring care to the caregivers, who are really overlooked in the medical industry."

Thanks to the foundation, patients and their caregivers in the Atlanta area can share a two-bedroom apartment close to the medical facility. Rather than sleeping in the same uncomfortable hospital chair night after night, the caregivers and their patients have access to the amenities they need, including a kitchen. The convenience and the comfort of the apartments help the families focus on healing.

The foundation has helped provide apartments for 186 people in the last 7 years. The foundation’s goal is to open a 50,000+ sq. ft., 5-story building with the capacity to help many more transplant families.

"When Bob started to work on the foundation, we started to support him and let him do things in the store where he could market it and grow the foundation," said Darin Workman, Ace Hardware Midway Employee Relations Manager. "Ace Hardware Corporation understands the need for the small business owners to touch their communities."

"It needs to be one of the most important things to give back to your community," said Gina Workman, Owner of Ace Hardware Midway. "Something that’s touching somebody, and it’s making a positive impact… it’s amazing how the community will rally around it."