A Manhattan woman was reunited with a cleaning woman who loaned her $2,000 more than 20 years ago – a gesture that helped launch her multimillion-dollar business.
Leith Yetman was desperately searching for Irene Eschuck, a cleaning woman who gave her the cash in 1982 to keep her computer school, the New York Institute of Business Technology, from closing.
The two lost touch in 1984, but were reunited recently after The Post ran a story about Yetman’s search for Eschuck.
“I’m so glad to see her again and I thank The Post for helping me find her,” Yetman said. Eschuck, 79, said her daughter Kathleen had shown her the story in The Post.
“I just wanted to help her,” a teary-eyed Eschuck said. “I love her very much, but I thought I would never see her again. I’m glad she’s become a success.”
Yetman said the reunion was “one of the happiest moments” of her life.
Yetman arrived in New York from Jamaica in 1962. She became a secretary at a law firm, attending college in the evening.
She opened the school in April 1981. A year later, she had more than a dozen students, but couldn’t make her $1,200 weekly payroll and faced the risk of going under.
Eschuck was making her cleaning rounds one night and found Yetman crying at her desk. After she explained her problem, Yetman recalled that Eschuck took her by the hand and said, “I have $3,000 in the bank. I could lend you some of the money.”
“I’ll never forget her blue eyes staring at me,” Yetman recalled. “At that moment she saved my business.”
Yetman eventually paid back Eschuck double her $2,000 loan. Her school now pulls in $3 million a year.
“If it wasn’t for Irene, the school would have never survived,” she said.