Readers from across the country are reaching out to help a dying Victoria mother who is raising two young children while living on welfare because of unpaid child support.

A trust account has been set up for the children in the family’s name at the TD Canada Trust.

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Tjally Heino, 42, is owed about $350,000 in child support.

Unable to work because she has an incurable cancer, she was forced onto disability and income assistance. She has a 15-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son.

Heino told the family’s story in the Times Colonist on Dec. 1 in the hope of getting justice, not charity.

But since the story appeared here and in Toronto, both in newspapers and on television, readers and viewers have offered to help.

Realtor Lisa Williams of Victoria has offered to pay for a trip for the family to Disneyland. Heino’s oncologist gave her the OK Thursday to travel. Heino said her children are ecstatic and she is overwhelmed by the generosity.

In court documents from 2007, John Timothy Jackson was ordered to pay Heino child support in the sum of $6,800 per month. The amount reflects how much her husband was earning at the time. The family says it hasn’t received a penny.

The judge also gave Heino sole custody of the couple’s children — Emily Rose Jackson and Aryeh Jackson. In 2009, the temporary order was made permanent by the court.

Meanwhile, in 2008, Heino was diagnosed with breast cancer. The cancer spread and Heino now has Stage 4 breast cancer.

“It will eventually be terminal. It’s not curable,” confirmed Victoria oncologist Dr. Vanessa Bernstein.

The Victoria mother is calling on the enforcement systems in B.C. and Ontario to find her ex-husband and give her children the financial support they deserve and are entitled to by law.

After the Times Colonist story was published, John Jackson’s brother Greg Jackson contacted the paper from Toronto to say his brother is ill with an opiate addiction, hasn’t worked steadily since 2006 and doesn’t make the same amount of money as he once did.

“No one in our family knows how to contact him, and he rarely makes an appearance in any of our lives — it is our best guess that he hasn’t been employed for many months now,” Jackson said in an email.

“There is no doubt that this is a sad story; in the very near future, my niece and nephew will have lost both their parents.”

Heino said it was her husband’s addiction that broke up their marriage in 2007 but that he went into treatment.

Even when he had finished his rehabilitation and was working, he didn’t attend court dates and didn’t make his court- ordered payments, according to the Heino family.

The enforcement programs in Ontario and B.C. say they have been on the case since Heino enrolled in B.C.’s Family Maintenance Enforcement Program in 2011, but critics say two years without results is unconscionable.

Since the story appeared, readers have emailed the paper to offer monetary donations of up to $500 for the children or simply to enhance the family’s Christmas celebration.

This has prompted the family to set up a trust account.

Donations can be made at any TD Canada Trust branch in the name of the Heino family, trust account No. 9919-6348976 or (Branch 9919, Account 6348976).

charnett@timescolonist.com