Posted on Sat, Dec. 11, 2004
By Liz Tascio
MARTINEZ - John Searles stopped his black SUV in the middle of a narrow residential street, waiting for instruction.
A golf cart rumbled in the background, incongruous in the tiny neighborhood. Busy people with walkie-talkies looked equally out of place.
Searles caught the eye of Steve Wallace, who gestured to him.
"Pull in over here and we'll unload the lunches," Wallace said.
Searles, a former Martinez school superintendent, and Wallace are two of hundreds of volunteers pitching in to build a new house in a single week for a Martinez teenager, Jhyrve Sears, whose story got the attention of ABC-TV's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."
Jhyrve, 17, was diagnosed this year with Krabbe, a usually fatal degenerative disease. She has been in North Carolina with her mother since March, where she received a stem cell transplant to create a new immune system and new blood. Her health is so fragile that she couldn't come back to her old house unless it had extensive repairs.
Wallace and his wife, Lise, the Sears' friends, applied to "Extreme Makeover" on Jhyrve's behalf, and won. The house was demolished Friday and will be rebuilt in five days and nine hours, with around-the-clock work.
When Mayor Rob Schroder heard the news, he asked the TV show's representatives what the community's contribution would be.
"Their answer was, 'We are a television company. You are the builders,'" Schroder said. While the TV show provides the charismatic magnet of the spotlight and the talents of celebrity designers, it's the community that makes the house happen by donating almost everything from building materials to labor to every meal eaten during the hectic weeklong building schedule.
City government pitched in even before the Sears family knew they had won, waiving building fees and filming fees, assigning police to the site, and getting plans approved at lightning speed. Schroder called Wallace several times a week, asking what he would need next.
Wallace drummed up more and more support, assigning a lower priority to his own Pleasant Hill City Council campaign. (He lost.) He found people through his church, his business connections and through Jhyrve's school, Pleasant Hill Adventist Academy.
DeNova Homes of Pleasant Hill stopped its day-to-day business to coordinate the entire project.
"(Schroder and Wallace) told me it's a family in need, and we're trying to get them home for the holidays," said Dave Sanson, co-owner of DeNova with his wife, Lori Sanson.
Sanson estimates he's bringing about 120 people from his company and more than 1,000 tradesmen and volunteers from the company's subcontractors to the job.
The DeNova Web site lists 61 businesses that have contributed to the project, and that doesn't include restaurants, movers or individual volunteers. Gary Whitney, manager of Piedmont Lumber in Walnut Creek, which is on the list, rattled off six more vendors that donated through his company.
Wallace enlisted Martinez stalwart Mary Perez, who has organized Christmas for Everyone for 18 years. She put that program on hold and found restaurants and volunteers to provide four meals a day (including one graveyard meal) for a week.
Because the Sears' house is on a steep hill in a neighborhood with narrow streets, the Shell refinery donated a large lot on their campus, a 5,000-square-foot tent and gas cards. The lot is full of pickup trucks, bulldozers on loan and donated piles of lumber. Volunteers drive donated vans in 24-hour shifts from the lot to the work site.
While the details of the house will remain under wraps until the family comes to see it Dec. 15, Sanson of DeNova Homes described the special steps they're taking to make sure it's safe enough for Jhyrve's evolving immune system.
"It's a clean-air environment," he said. The heating and ventilating system will have special filters to make the air 99.99 percent pure, similar to a hospital. Walls will have mold guard and waterproofing. The windows will have a UV treatment. To ward off dust, the blinds will be inside the windows, between the two panes of glass. Floors will be sealed. Sanson estimated the whole project, done in a normal time frame of about six months, would cost about $800,000.
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