WEST PARIS — A total of $27,5 has been raised toward the cost of building a house for 24-year-old Beth Coffin, according to members of the Beth’s House Committee.

Coffin suffers from spinal muscular atrophy Type II, two blood diseases and scoliosis, leaving her wheelchairbound. Her mother, Bonnie, who is her full-time caretaker, and her stepfather have chronic Lyme disease, leaving them unable to work.

Their home, an old trailer with a stick-built addition, is falling apart. The living room ceiling leaks, and mold and rot is evident in the kitchen floors, along with a host of other problems. Coffin is confined to a wheelchair and sleeps in a Porta-Lung — a cylinder-shaped bed much like the old Iron Lung, in which she must remain on her back in a 30-inch wide tube with her head in a neck collar outside the machine.

When word reached the public through a newspaper account last May about the family’s plight, a group of area residents who had never met before formed a committee to help the family. The Beth’s House Committee has continued to raise money throughout the year.

The most recent contributions have been from the Western Maine Board of Realtors who donated $1,500 and the Grace Fellowship Church of Oxford who donated $1,000 from a dinner held on Coffin’s behalf.

Pastors Lloyd Waterhouse and Richard Parsons recently presented the check from the Grace Fellowship Church to the Coffins.

Non-tax deductible donations can be sent to: Beth’s House, c/o Norway Savings Bank, 261 Main St., Norway, ME 04268. To make a tax deductible donation, checks may be made payable to Community Concepts and designated for Beth’s House. The address is Community Concepts, Inc. Attn: Jim Wilkins, 79 Main St., Auburn, ME 04210.

Treasurer Paul Thornfeldt said the committee would like to thank each donor individually with a thank-you note but because of privacy laws, the committee receives no identification on donations sent to the Norway Savings Bank and are therefore unable to personally acknowledge the contributions.

[email protected]

Fundraising efforts to build a house for Beth Coffin of West Paris continue, with $1,500 donated by the Western Maine Board of Realtors. At the presentation at The Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Paris are Beth, center, her mother, Bonnie, left, WMBOR Realtor of the Year Joyce Barter of Krainin Real Estate, back; and Monica Laverdiere of Kennison Real Estate in Oxford, right, WMBOR president-elect.