Rib Hillis, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: The Frisch Family
This week on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (Sundays at 8 pm/ET), we're helping out the Frisch family of Toledo, Ohio.
Aaron, the father, he is a hero. He is an absolute hero. He's a firefighter, so he saves people every day, and he saved his partner during riots that happened here in Toledo a few years back. Beyond that, Aaron and his wife, Jackie, were on a mission in Haiti and decided to adopt five kids they had never met before, then came back to Toledo and adopted three more kids from the inner-city. This family is just one big hero family. You have a firefighter father who gives back to the community, you have a mother who's been sick and is still struggling to recover — and you really don't know if she's going to make it — you have thee kids of your own and yet you're going to go out to adopt kids from Haiti and three from the inner city of Toledo, and you're going to do it with a smile on your face and be grateful for everything that you have.
One of my projects this week is doing a room for the three adopted guys from Haiti — Mo, Benson, and Joe. And I mean, these kids, this whole family they take nothing for granted, so it is my job to spoil them a little bit. You know, to give them what they don't even ask for. In their old room, the boys all slept practically right on top of each other. The bunk beds were just stacked up one on top of the next. The new room is not going to be like that. They're each going to have their own separate beds. But they're also still going to be together in one room, because that's important.
These boys, they all came from the same orphanage back home in Haiti, they have a bond, and now they're part of this family and I just don't want that togetherness to get lost just because they have a new house. This new room is going to be much bigger, gigantic closet they can actually hang up their clothes, beds that aren't stacked on top of each other, and a desk, a desk where Benson and Joe can actually sit down and work at starting this computer company that they want to start for the people of Haiti.
Things get crazy around here after we start demo. I mean we have to get this house, the old one down and the new one up, before the family gets home. I was lucky enough to catch up with our Builder Tim Schlachter from Buckeye Realty Group and talk with him in all this chaos. What struck me was that here's this man who's got all this responsibility, all this going on around him, and yet he didn't lose sight of why we're here. That this is for this family, this is about the community and about giving back and giving hope to the Frisch family and the community of Toledo. I thought that was amazing, amazing, Tim is a good guy to be here building this house.
Even through all this family will go through this week this family is not going to change. They may have a new house but they're still the same family. They were founded on love. They'll still keep on living for each other, just in a new house. This house means that Aaron doesn't have to worry about his family when he's out saving lives in the community. They don't have to worry about Jackie's being too hot, too cold, bundled up in blankets. Jackie said everything's going to be ok. I truly believe that with this new house, for the Frisch family, everything is going to be ok, today. Today we made a difference. We'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
But today, we will affect this world in a positive way. Because that's what Aaron and Jackie do. Every single day they make this world a better place.
