The Yazzie Family
This week we're in Pinon, Arizona - actually the far northeast corner of Arizona on the Navajo reservation - and we're here to meet a very special Navajo family, the Yazzies. Mom Georgia and her kids: Geralene, Garrett, and Gwendolyn.
Gwen has epilepsy and severe asthma and they were heating the house with coal. Coal is expensive, does not burn clean air and was basically wreaking havoc on Gwen's respiratory system. Being the great brother he is, Garrett began looking for a way to help his sister and he came up with something pretty amazing. When he was just 13 years old he had an idea to heat his family's home. He used 16 tin cans and an old radiator from a car to create a solar heating system to warm his family. Now this didn't go unnoticed, he received many awards and accolades but his dream didn't stop there, he contacted us to let us know that his family still needed help. The home, a trailer, was basically falling apart all around them. Garrett Yazzie has asked us to help him fulfill a dream: To make sure that his entire family is safe, comfortable, and warm.
It's pretty remote out here - there are actually areas that don't even have paved roads. The Yazzie's house, well, there's no road and there's no driveway. There was no way we were gonna get the bus up there, nevertheless heavy construction equipment. With the help of the Navajo DOT we were able to get those roads taken care of. We just needed a builder, and for that we called on a great builder who joined us before in North Carolina. Steve Sasso and Darren Drevik with HomeLife Communities stepped up big time in an area where building was as tough as it gets and pulled this off building a beautiful, quality home for this family.
I'm really excited to take care of Garrett's room this week. Garrett's an amazing kid. He loves to ride his bike. For him, that's an escape, so I think it's really important that his room is an escape. That room is going to be all about BMX. I know he loves to invent, and he loves to create. So I'm giving him his own little secret room, off of the bedroom, and I'm calling it his lab. He loves to create and he's obviously very smart so it's just a room to inspire him, a place here he can go and he can study or he can look at a computer or a microscope or a globe, and just create and invent. Who knows with this kid... anything can happen.
Navajo culture is all about walking with the land, with the earth, and in being self-sustainable with the environment. We want to make sure that we honor that this week, it's really important to the culture and our team. The designers all got together and had a meeting. We just said let's go green; let's really go green. Let's talk about solar panels. Let's talk about recycling water. Let's talk about indigenous plants, low flush toilets, and cork floors. Walls with insulation in them everything we can do to embrace this proud culture. Embrace where we're at with this weather that we have and take advantage of it. I think we were able to pull that off and at the same time honor this remarkable young man and his family.
