Retired architect, 80, forced to bag groceries as medical bills, promise to dying wife leave him broke

A former big shot architect was forced to bag groceries after mounting medical bills and a promise he made to his dying wife left him broke.Utah resident Gary Saling, 80, has spent years working four days a week at Smith’s Market in St.George – though a well-deserved retirement might be on the horizon thanks to the generosity of others.The senior citizen started the job in December 2020 about six months after the death of his wife, Carol, from two forms of dementia – including the rare, aggressive Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.His spouse, who was an artist, suffered for about three and a half years, but he was always by her side.

 “I promised myself, God, her, her brother, her son and daughter, (her stepsons), I promised them I would not put her in a nursing home,” Saling told The Post on Sunday.“I’d keep her at home and I kept it.”The devotion led to skyrocketing at-home care costs, which totaled $80,000 including other medical bills the two faced over the years.“I paid it all, that’s why I’m broke,” he said, noting about $40,000 was from the at-home care.The California native, who was a grocery bagger as a teenager growing up, was a talented architect for decades, working on multi-millionaire mansions for big-name clients including Jeffries Investment Group founder Boyd Jefferies in Laguna Beach.The company Saling worked for was even published on the Architectural Digest top 100 list four times.Gary and Carol, single parents who both had first marriages that ended, first met in 1990 while she was driving and he was walking along a sidewalk after leaving a park.

The two caught a glimpse of each other and began talking on a park bench for more than three hours.By the next year, they were engaged and soon after they tied the knot.They later moved from the Golden State to Montana when the pair’s children from the previous marriages grew up.“We fell in love the day that we met at the park,” he said.

“We admitted that to each other ...