Roughly 54% of small business owners in the United States report that a single unexpected expense of $10,000 or more would put their operation at serious risk of closure, according to estimates from the Small Business Administration. For Wanda Trujillo, 67, that number stopped being a statistic sometime around November 2024 — the month the hospital bill arrived.
Wanda reached out to me in January 2026, after reading a story I’d published the previous fall about a retired couple in Akron navigating pandemic-era relief funds. Her email was exactly two sentences long. The second one ended with: “I think my situation might be similar, but maybe worse.”
When I sat down with Wanda Trujillo on a Thursday morning in February at her daycare — Little Sprouts Learning Center, a licensed facility she operates out of a converted house on Columbus’s east side — the children hadn’t arrived yet. The room smelled like crayons and disinfectant. She apologized for the noise the furnace was making. “It’s been like that since October,” she said, without elaborating. That sentence, I would later realize, was a window into everything.
How a Single Medical Emergency Unraveled Two Decades of Stability
The financial unraveling began without warning, as it almost always does. In November 2024, Wanda’s husband Robert, 69, was hospitalized for a stent placement following a minor heart attack. The procedure went well. The bill did not.
After Medicare and their supplemental coverage applied, the Trujillos were left with $14,200 in out-of-pocket costs. Wanda put $8,600 of that on two credit cards at a combined interest rate of approximately 22%. The remaining $5,600 went onto a hospital payment plan at $250 a month. “We thought we were prepared,” she told me. “We had Medicare, we had the supplemental. And then that bill came and I just sat there staring at it for about twenty minutes.”
The timing compounded the damage. Robert had been working part-time at a warehouse distribution center — roughly $1,100 a month — before being laid off in September 2024, two months before the hospitalization. The company cited restructuring. He was still searching for work when the medical bills landed.
With Robert’s income gone, the household was leaning almost entirely on two sources: Wanda’s Social Security check of $1,640 a month, and Little Sprouts’ revenue of approximately $3,400 monthly from eight enrolled children. That’s not poverty — but there is almost no margin, and no room for surprises.
When the Insurance Company Walked Away After One Claim
If the medical debt was the first blow, the property insurance situation was the second. In August 2024, a burst pipe in the daycare’s back bathroom caused roughly $6,000 in water damage. Wanda filed a claim. The insurer paid out — and then, at renewal in October, notified her they would not be renewing her policy.
She scrambled for new coverage. The quotes she received ranged from $390 to $440 per month — more than double her previous premium of $180. She locked in at $415 with a new carrier. That $235 monthly increase added nearly $2,820 to her annual operating costs, overnight, with no negotiation possible.
By December 2024, Wanda had credit card debt accumulating interest, a hospital payment plan running through late 2026, a premium that had more than doubled, and a husband without work. The daycare was still open. But she described those months to me as “treading water with weights on.”
Searching for Relief — What Wanda Actually Found
Wanda is not someone who asks for help easily. She described herself as “the person who figures things out.” But she started looking for programs she might qualify for, and her search moved across three different channels over roughly two months.
Her first stop was the SBA website, where she found information on Economic Injury Disaster Loans. Ohio had been included in a disaster designation tied to severe weather events in 2024. She applied in late December, requesting $18,000 to cover the insurance cost increase, credit card consolidation, and operating shortfalls.
The Ohio Child Care Stabilization Grant was the clearest, fastest win. The program distributes federal Child Care and Development Fund dollars — administered through the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services — to licensed providers like Wanda. She qualified as a small facility operator and received $4,800 in March 2025, roughly ten weeks after applying.
The SBA loan, by contrast, has moved at a grinding pace. As of our February 2026 conversation — more than 14 months after she submitted the application — Wanda said she’d received two requests for additional documentation but no final decision. “They keep asking for more paperwork,” she said. “I’ve sent everything twice. At this point I’m not counting on it.”
Where Wanda Stands Today — and What She Wishes She’d Done Sooner
When I asked Wanda to walk me through her current financial picture, she did it without flinching. The credit card debt, originally $8,600, sits at approximately $5,900 after the grant payment and several months of minimum-plus payments. The hospital payment plan — $250 a month — runs through November 2026. Robert found part-time work at a hardware store in January 2026, bringing in about $820 a month.
The daycare is still open. All eight kids are still enrolled. She still shows up before 7 a.m. every weekday and greets each child by name at the door.
Her tax preparer recently flagged the IRS Small Business Health Care Tax Credit as a potential benefit for her 2025 filing — a credit she had never claimed in 22 years of running Little Sprouts. The estimated value is roughly $1,200. It won’t erase the debt, but Wanda called it “a surprise I actually needed.”
The one thing she said she’d do differently: apply for the stabilization grant earlier. She had heard about it in early 2024 but assumed she probably wouldn’t qualify. She waited nearly a year. “I left money on the table while I was drowning,” she said. “Don’t do that. Just apply and let them tell you no.”
There is no clean ending to Wanda’s story. She is still in debt. Her husband is working a job that pays a fraction of what he earned before. Her insurance costs are still $235 more per month than they were 18 months ago. But the daycare is operating, and she is moving forward — slowly, methodically, without much fanfare.
As I left Little Sprouts that February morning, the first parents were arriving. Wanda was at the door, smiling, crouching down to say good morning to a boy in a dinosaur backpack. Whatever weight she was carrying, she had set it somewhere the children couldn’t see it. That, she told me before I left, was the job.
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