MANATEE COUNTY (WFLA) – Gini White has spent the last 38 years welcoming children into her home. She’s fostered hundreds of children, most with severe medical conditions.

The medical foster mom is currently caring for three children and spends hours every week taking them to and from doctor’s appointments.

8 On Your Side shared her story in December, shortly after her trusty wheelchair van of 25 years reached its lifespan. White had no other option than to lift the children in and out of wheelchairs and car seats every time they had to leave the house.

She admits it was tough on the kids and on her back. One of the boys she cares for is almost 50 pounds.

“He would spend the first 20 or 30 minutes of every trip just whining and crying because it was too much on him,” White said . “These kids with neurological issues, they don’t do well with that much manipulating at one time,” she continued.

Soon after 8 On Your Side shared White’s story, the Sarasota-based Floyd C. Johnson and Flo Singer Johnson Foundation stepped up to help.

“I was floored, just that they would do that for us,” White said.

In addition, there’s been an outpouring of community support through a GoFundMe account her family created to help White with the cost of a new van, a wheelchair ramp into her home, and a project to make her bathroom wheelchair friendly.

“I have always felt it in my heart, but to know others were relating to it and wanting to reach out to help in my passion for these kids was just truly a blessing,” White said. “When my son first came to me and said he was going to start this (GoFundMe) and he was like, what do you think? What went through my mind, it is a great thought, maybe we’ll get something, maybe it will help, maybe I can get a down payment, never did I think it would take off the way it did,” she continued.

White calls the new wheelchair van her ‘miracle van’. She took one of her kids to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg last week for an appointment and said the trip was a breeze.

“He was calm, he was quiet, he tolerated the trip, there was no crying. We got up there, literally unlocked, wheeled him out, did our appointment and did the whole thing in reverse. It was for him, a huge difference and I have actually transported both boys in it and they both did super well,” White said.

White is grateful to her family and the community for the endless support.

“Just my total thanks to the entire community, to the foundation, to those who have individually stepped up to help, to the Ability Center for going above and beyond with every one of my questions or concerns or what if’s, and to you guys for helping us get the story out there,” White said.