Because I knew him well enough I told him what hospital I was in. It was while this was going on that Joseph contracted MRSA, a multidrug-resistant infection he wasn’t expected to survive. Martino couldn’t talk him into anything straight away, so he began calling regularly, often just to chat. I know what you’re going through, and I will help you out.’" "I told him what had happened to me, and he said, ‘gee. In February 2008, "out of the blue," Joseph got a call from a salesman that identified himself as Ron Martino from PushTraffic, with a work from home opportunity. So he took to the internet, looking for "work from home" opportunities and requesting information from various websites. So, I tried to find work as a lawyer from home, but that was right when Michigan’s economy started to go to hell, and a lot of law firms weren’t outsourcing work.” Joseph describes his mental state after yet another stint in rehab: “I’m moping, pretty much, and right around Christmas time I decided, you know, I’d better get my butt in gear and find something I can do from home. By August 2007, complications prevented him from working at all - possibly forever. He'd never walk again.Įventually, Joseph would make it back to work at his law firm, although he couldn’t keep up his old pace. By the time he was discovered, the damage had been done. He laid there for an hour, unable to move, while his daughters watched television in the living room. While nothing was broken, the blow prevented blood from reaching his spinal cord. His leg gave out and he landed on his back. The lawyer, husband, and father of two was walking across the driveway with a bag of garbage when his bare foot slipped in a puddle of water that had collected beneath his car’s air conditioner. On a warm summer day in 2002, in Charlevoix, Michigan, Richard Joseph’s bad luck began.