WILLINGBORO — Lillie Daniels' house "looks like a tornado hit" and a shed in her back yard is loaded with equipment she hopes never to personally need. But that's what it takes for her to help people who can't afford their medical bills, and she's happy to do it.

She directed her volunteer time toward other people's unaffordable medical needs after her own bout with breast cancer in 2002.

"We had good insurance" that covered most of the costs, she said. "But 80 percent still wasn't enough. We were left with a bill for about $10,000."

Talks with Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, from which she had retired years earlier, cut that bill to about $2,000. Daniels realized how lucky she was to have insurance and a familiarity with the system. It led her to create the nonprofit Bread of Life Foundation, which lends money and equipment while helping people navigate insurance and grants that could pay their costs.

Daniels, along with the Rev. Charles Levi Martin, will be honored Saturday for work to improve their communities. Both are Willingboro residents, and the organization honoring them is based there. But the Pi Mu Omega graduate chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority recognizes people from around the region each year.

"We're looking for someone who serves within the community," Pi Mu Omega President Shirley Jones said. "They're out there trying to make things better for people."

Pi Mu Omega is a service organization with roots in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority best known on college campuses. The chapter's 69 members come from Burlington and Camden counties, having joined AKA in college or signed up with the service club on their own. Pi Mu Omega started recognizing community leaders during a Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast in 1987.

Daniels, 67, said she'll accept the honor not for herself but for the many people who help run Bread of Life.

"All of these things would be impossible without them," she said. In addition, "the things that I do I can only do by the glory of God."

The organization pays no one. Daniels and 10 volunteers include an obstetrician/gynecologist and an oncologist. Money from a few corporate grants and annual fundraising events goes to people in need, and Daniels' home is the headquarters.

"We just don't have money right now for storage and office space," she said. "If we paid all our money out for storage, then when people needed money for medicine, we wouldn't be able to help them."

So the backyard shed houses wheelchairs, shower seats and other equipment that insurance typically doesn't cover. The goods come in as donations and go out as loans.

"All we ask is that people take good care of it," Daniels said. "We scrub it down and sterilize it and put it in storage until someone else needs it."

Bread of Life helped about a dozen people last year with financial needs related to chronic disease or short-term illness. Daniels recalled one woman who couldn't afford insulin supplies to control diabetes, so foundation volunteers searched for a source and assisted with the paperwork to connect her with an insurance provider.

"We gave her a check for $200 (to cover her costs) until the insurance kicked in," she said.

Bread of Life organizes health education efforts and arranges free screenings for several illnesses.

Daniels works as a school bus aide shepherding students with autism. From the time her morning bus run ends until she reports for duty in the afternoon, she handles Bread of Life business. That means her days are full with helping other people.

"All my life I wanted to be a nurse and I never did," she said. "I was always the kid who patched up everyone in the neighborhood."

Reach Renee R. Janowicz at cpcommunities@courierpostonline.com.