Perhaps your mother has used a walker for several years, but now she needs more help – a motorized wheelchair to preserve her independence. Medicare pays for one assistive device every five years. It covered her walker … three years to go. Power wheelchairs cost $999 and up.

Or the surgeon who replaced your knee tells you to get a knee cooler, a device that circulates chilled water in a cuff to reduce your pain, swelling and inflammation. That cryo cooler costs $200. Your insurance doesn’t cover it.

Or you’re caring for a disabled spouse at home and need the kind of equipment you’d see in a healthcare setting: an adjustable hospital bed, a Hoyer lift to get in and out, grip bars and a riser for the bathroom. Purchasing all these – the bare basics — is far beyond the budget.

Help may be just a call or a short drive away … for Fargo-Moorhead has a hero. Project HERO, that is. The 20-year-old independent nonprofit collects and redistributes used hospital equipment and medical supplies that would otherwise be discarded.

At HERO’s two retail centers in the Moorhead Center Mall and its south Fargo headquarters, patients with a medical need may obtain a power scooter or wheelchair for $100, a cryo cooler for $40, or a hospital bed – delivered and set up, with two sets of hospital linens – for $400. They can rent a knee scooter, purchase a used lift chair, obtain wound-care supplies at a steep discount … or, if income-qualified, even receive what they need at no cost.

“We’re one of about 50 medical surplus recovery groups that recycle and distribute equipment and supplies to medical missions around the world,” explains operationsmanager Georgia Dufault. “What sets us apart from all the rest is that we don’t only supply people far away. We also serve people who need this help right here in our own community.”

HERO – Healthcare Equipment Recycling Organization – began as the brainchild of a local woman who watched piles of otherwise-pristine medical supplies being thrown into the garbage. “That’s how Deanna Micheli got started in 1996,” Georgia recounts.

A registered nurse at MeritCare, Micheli couldn’t stand to see perfectly good surgical and medical supplies be discarded merely because Medicare rules and other restrictions regard the partial remnants of bulk packaging, once opened, to be no longer usable. “She and several her nurse friends began rescuing sterile, individually packaged surgical and medical supplies that were destined for the landfill or incinerator,” the director continues.

For the first six years of HERO’s history, the material they rescued was sent overseas to medical missions around the globe. But in 2003, when its founders formally incorporated, they recognized that not all needs were so distant.

Since incorporating as a nonprofit in 2003, the F-M volunteers have distributed a great deal of the 150,000-plus pounds of supplies and equipment that they collect every year … right here at home.

True, they also shipped 17 pallets of medical material last month to Haiti, where dozens of local volunteers will travel in January for the 19th F-M Haiti Medical Mission. True, too, they regularly exchange excess inventory with Mano a Mano, a Minnesota charity that maintains and supports medical missions in Bolivia, and work with other international mission groups as the opportunity arises.

But families and individuals in the F-M area have first dibs on the medical necessities in their large warehouse. Every Tuesday, 400 or so pounds of surplus supplies and equipment, packed on pallets, arrive from Sanford Health and Essentia Hospital. The next morning, volunteers pull in by the dozen. Many of the mostly-female regulars have been dedicated to the work of sorting and organizing donations since near the beginning. Others are newer, like the retired medical-equipment technician who checks, cleans and if needed repairs the durable goods. College students pitch in, too, bringing their backgrounds in nursing or pharmacy to bear on the massive recycling program.

According to development director Stephen Roise, HERO accepted 172,000 pounds of donations from the hospitals in 2015. Ninety percent was examined and found fit to be resold or donated outright.

Not all donations, though, come from hospitals. Georgia explains that much of the mobility equipment, for example, comes to them when families no longer need it to care for a loved one. “Why leave that motorized scooter in a corner of the basement when it could be helping someone else?” she asks. “Give us a call to talk it over. We clean and repair it and find it a new home – and you get a nice tax deduction in the meantime.”

Individuals are welcome to shop in HERO’s two tidy retail centers. As long as there’s a medical need, no other paperwork is necessary to purchase their stock, from motorized scooters, Rollator wheeled walkers, crutches, canes and bath chairs to gauze, saline solution, bandages, adult incontinence supplies, lotions, linens and much more.

All baby-care items, Georgia says, are donated to the YWCA shelter for women and children. Homeless shelters receive both equipment and supplies, as does the New Life Center’s respite care program (a collaboration with Sanford). Family Healthcare, Frasier Ltd., Friendship Inc. and home health agencies also benefit from HERO. The fraction of goods it receives that cannot be used for direct human care (outdated, perhaps, or because of damaged packaging) is snapped up by area colleges for nursing education.

Georgia says Project HERO’s scope has grown tenfold since she became ops director 10 years ago. “We might have worked with 800 customers in a year’s time back then,” she says. “Now we see 450 every month. Our donations have increased dramatically. Our warehouse is usually full to the top.”

HERO’s annual budget of less than a million dollars supports a full-time staff of four along with several part-timers in its stores. Sales of rescued, repurposed supplies and equipment cover about one-third of costs. The balance is made up of contributions from individuals and businesses, as well as grants from local and regional foundations.

As the year winds down, Project HERO is counting on those budget-balancing contributors through its annual “$40,000 in 40 Days” campaign. M.J. Capelli Family Hair Salons kicked off this year’s drive by matching the first $10,000 in donations. With that goal now surpassed, Stephen hopes the charity’s regular and new donors will help it reach the top over the next nine days.

“Even though we’ve been around for 20 years, we still hear, ‘I didn’t even know about you,’” Georgia notes. “Anybody can shop at HERO. The dollars you save by shopping here don’t only help you out … they allow us to pass it on to someone else who is in need.”

For more information on Project HERO and to donate online, go to herofargo.com. If you have medical equipment you no longer need, call 701-212-1921 to discuss it, especially for larger items. The Fargo retail store — located at 5012 53rd St. S. — is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, while HERO’s Center Mall store is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.