Water Valley woman’s birthday fundraiser erases millions in medical debt

WATER VALLEY — “I can’t believe I’m 60 years old,” said Beth Mayeaux to the friends gathered in her Water Valley home’s light-filled, eggshell blue living room. She paused, smiling, as they clapped and cheered.  

The education sales professional from Jackson thanked the assembled guests for supporting her birthday fundraiser for medical debt relief. The eight-week campaign, which ends Wednesday, raises money for north-central Mississippi’s Yalobusha and Calhoun counties. 

A glossy sign next to her proclaimed, “You gave $21,000.” The money will go to Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit that buys past-due medical debt from hospitals and debt collectors for a fraction of the amount patients owed. Using donations, they pay off the balances and notify recipients with a letter in the mail. 

Because the debt can be purchased cheaply, the nonprofit says each dollar donated can relieve up to $100 in medical debt. The money Mayeaux raised erased $3.2 million in medical debt, according to the organization.  

The funds from Mayeaux’s “Getting (G)older, Giving Back” campaign will help over 1,600 people, said Marisa Clemente, Undue Medical Debt’s vice president of philanthropy. It’s enough to cover the nonprofit’s already purchased debt holdings in the two counties, and additional money will go to the Mississippi Delta, where Mayeaux’s wife Robbie Fischer is from.  

In Water Valley, a town of  about 3,400, over a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. That’s more than the roughly 18% poverty rate in Mississippi, which also has among the nation’s highest rates of medical debt. 

Water Valley was a setting that made sense for Mayeaux, who  knew she wanted to do something big for her 60th birthday bash. For past decade birthdays, she had taken trips — to Paris and Champagne for her 50th, to New York for her 40th. This time, she wanted to give back to the community that had welcomed her nearly a decade ago.

She remembered having medical debt in her 20s, how a third party that bought her debt “hounded” her and how it  started impacting her credit score. Just before the COVID-19 pandemic, she learned about Undue Medical Debt. The pieces clicked. 

“It’s just so very Beth,” said Kerry O’Donoghue, a Water Valley resident who became friends with Mayeaux and Fischer soon after they moved to the area. O’Donoghue remembers first hearing about the campaign. 

“I was absolutely all in, and also furious that we live in a country where this is needed,” she said.

A big ask, and a broad imagination

Mayeaux first brought her idea to the mission committee at Church of the Nativity, the small Episocopal church where she helped start an on-site food pantry, now restocked twice a day with shelf-stable foods. She spoke in the first part of the meeting, before church treasurer Eddie Woods presented his financial report.

“When Beth finished with her presentation, she said, ‘I would like to have $3,000.’ And the room went silent,” Woods recounted at the party on Saturday.

“I was thinking, that’s a lot of money,” said the church’s senior warden, Mary Beth Pulsifer, standing beside him.

Wood smiled as he re-enacted the dramatic moment. 

“I said, ‘Well, it all comes down to finances. So in looking at the budget, I don’t see that we can do $3,000.’ And then I paused and I said, ‘I think we need to do $5,000.’” 

Cheekily, he added, “And Beth seconded the motion.”

Pulsifer talked about her motivation for supporting the campaign: imagining what it would be like to get a letter in the mail saying that your debt is erased. Another partygoer, bankruptcy paralegal Jack Barry, said he’s seen people have to declare bankruptcy due to their medical debt. 

Undue Medical Debt identifies people who earn at or below four times the federal poverty level, or $132,000 annually for a family of four, or have medical debt that exceeds 5% of their income. People don’t need to apply for relief, and face no adverse tax consequences, Clemente said. Because they buy bundled portfolios of debt and can only purchase from hospitals willing to sell to them, the organization can’t respond to individual requests for debt relief. 

Mayeaux and Fischer kicked off the campaign in August with $1,966, representing Mayeaux’s birth year. She wrote letters by hand to her network, a sizable one given that her annual Christmas card list includes some 400 people. While some donations came in larger amounts from grants, the majority were raised through individuals and neighbors in a true “people’s campaign,” she said.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever been a part of,” 71-year-old Woods said. 

Out on the spacious porch, guests mingled over bubbly beverages while Mayeaux flitted between friends. Barbara Phillips, a civil rights attorney, waved Mayeaux over and imparted a secret about her birthday gift. 

That business taken care of, she shared a recent moment when  an acquaintance in New York told her that for things to change in Mississippi was “beyond his imagination.” 

“It occurred to me, well, your imagination does not limit our reality,” said Phillips, a Virginian who grew up in Memphis but has since made Mississippi her home. 

She conjured an image of Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, standing up in a cotton field that stretched for as far as the eye could see and imagining that she could change her world. The vision that Hamer and people that went with her to register to vote had still astonishes her, Phillips said.

For her, that spirit is reflected in efforts such as a medical debt fundraiser, where people take a larger issue into their own hands. 

“We’re doing it right here in this house in Water Valley,” she said. 

The party, which fell on Mayeaux’s actual birthday, provided a fitting finale to the monthslong campaign. “Thank y’all so much,” Mayeaux had said earlier in the living room, at the end of her toast. “Let’s just keep on drinking champagne, eating cupcakes, and erasing medical debt.” 

An hour after the stated 5 p.m. ending time, Mayeaux and Fisher waved off the last of their guests and retired with their terrier Mike to the kitchen for a dinner of frozen pizza. A half-empty basket of pink rubber eraser party favors stood by the door — a reminder of the debt that their collective efforts will wipe away.