Video: Local Nonprofit Helps Rebuild Homes, Lives

One day out of the year, masses of volunteers spread out over Rohnert Park and Cotati to help those in need with home repairs — everything from weeding a yard, rebuilding a porch or remodeling a leaky bathroom. On Saturday, more than a hundred people showed up at Grocery Outlet on Commerce Boulevard in Rohnert Park for breakfast and their work assignments for the day.

The event, called “Rebuild Day,” was started in 1999 by local nonprofit Rebuilding Together. The project is focused on helping people with disabilities, low income families and elderly people with long-term or emergency home repairs. This year, out of the seven projects selected, one stood out to the team at Rebuilding Together.

A mobile home in Cotati: it was completely gutted before work crews got started in the early morning hours of April 30. Furniture was put in storage, carpeting ripped out, holes in the floors patched, walls and ceilings completely re-drywalled. The house was a total remodel — and it was the biggest project in the history of the Rebuilding Together.

“I’m not a guy who gets emotional, but this one, you just couldn’t help it,” said Ron Dodds, the house captain in charge of the remodel, who also owns a landscape construction company based in Rohnert Park called No Limit Landscaping. “We found it in a really dilapidated state.”

Dodds, like the rest of the team Saturday, worked completely for free. A small group of construction workers actually started the project weeks before Rebuild Day to get a head start. The property owner, who requested her name or address not be published, originally just asked for some help with bathroom maintenance. But when construction crews inspected the home, they realized the house needed a total makeover. It was unsafe; literally rotting away.

The homeowner has lived on the property for 47 years, and she has her hands full. She takes care of her veteran brother full-time.

“I’ve been in the trades my whole life, this is just a way to help another person out who needs it,” said Dodds, who has volunteered for every Rebuild Day since its inception.

“Our purpose is to offer a helping hand, not a hand out,” said Diane Broadhead, executive director of Rebuilding Together. “We provide a service to allow our aging homeowners, the physically challenged and families with children the ability to live independently and with dignity in the comfort of their own home.”

For about the last 10 years, Dodds brings his daughter Tayler, now 17, out to the work sites. She swings a hammer and paintbrush right along with everyone else, and probably knew more about construction than half the people at the house. Dodds said it's a way to teach his daughter to have independence and self-esteem.

Outside, work crews patched holes in on the exterior of the home, built a custom porch where nothing stood before, hauled away truckloads of brush and debris almost engulfing the house, painted the fading exterior and planted a garden of corn, tomatoes and herbs.

Inside, cabinets, the refrigerator and carpeting were completely replaced free of charge. 

"This is by far the biggest project in the history of this chapter of the organization," said Eric Lathrop, president of Rebuilding Together.

For the volunteers, it's a way to get their hands dirty and make someone's life better.

“This is a thing me and my dad do together, I’ve been doing it since I was little,” said Tayler Dodds. “It feels really good to do something for someone else.”

Fanta Pawlowski, another volunteer, doesn’t have much experience in construction, but she still wanted to help.

“I may not be an electrician or a plumber, but I can sweep and I can work hard,” Pawlowski said as she pulled a tangle of blackberry bushes from an old garage. “I heard about this and said I would love to volunteer my time to help someone in need.”

Elsewhere in Rohnert Park, the Rancho Cotate Cougars baseball team was busy rebuilding the baseball field at Santa Dorotea Park and hoards of people showed up at the Community Center for repair and maintenance that the city wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.

“It’s really about doing something that makes someone’s life better,” said Councilmember Pam Stafford, who was helping out at the Community Center.

Mayor Gina Belforte agreed.

“It’s so important to learn how to give back to those in need,” Belforte said. “So many of us have it pretty good. In today’s economy, this group is more important than ever.”

Editor's note: In addition to the Cotati mobile home project, the Community Center and the Santa Dorotea baseball field remodel, volunteers worked on four other homes yesterday in Rohnert Park or Cotati. The project was made possible by its sponsors, including Grocery Outlet, the city of Rohnert Park, Lowe's, Reyff Electric, Pipe Dreams Plumbing and Mark Pippin at Innovative Screen Printing as well as numerous in-kind donors.

The day finished with a barbecue hosted by the Rotary Club of Rohnert Park-Cotati. Click on the video to the right to view it.