Last Christmas, a car accident on the way home from basketball practice critically injured Jace Garcia and his sister, Haevyn. Haevyn spent three days recovering in the hospital, but Jace was left paralyzed.
Now, 9-year-old Jace uses a wheelchair, but getting around his Castle Rock home was difficult.
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The family reached out to the Home Builders Foundation, a Denver nonprofit that works with local builders and trade partners to help people with disabilities stay in their homes.
One of those builders is KB Home, which worked with HBF on the Garcia family’s renovation.
KB Home renovated a bathroom in the home to make it ADA-compliant, widened doorways so Jace could move around in his wheelchair, and added new hard flooring, as well as modifying the closet and building a ramp at the home’s entrance.
“We are pleased and honored to assist Jace and his family,” Randy Carpenter, president of KB Home’s Colorado division, said in a statement. “Supporting children and building relationships in the communities where we live, work and build homes is at the heart of what we do best. With this project, our employees tapped into their passion to serve others for the benefit of a very deserving young man.”
HBF held a dedication on Friday to celebrate the completed project. Some of the firefighters and first responders who responded to the accident in December were on hand to see the renovations.
“Jace’s mother calls them ‘superheroes,'” Beth Forbes, executive director of HBF, said in an email. “They brought their new fire truck to the party on Friday to surprise Jace.”
Some familiar faces (or masks) were also on hand.
“The project captain, John ‘JP’ Perez of KB Home, knows that Jace is a huge Star Wars fan, so he arranged for the stormtrooper and Darth Vader to join the firefighters and first responders as well,” Forbes said.
