Agencies, Cooper Staff Help Burned-Out Family

Spurred by dreams of a better existence, Rose Corral packed her life into an 8-by-12-foot trailer home and moved to Spokane with her three children last August. She left behind a three-year domestic violence ordeal in Plummer, Idaho, and started fresh in Spokane. Getting by on funds from a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families grant, she started classes at Spokane Community Colleges, working toward her Associate of Applied Sciences degree in the clinical medical assistant program.

Things moved along well for the family until one day in mid-October, when the family’s home caught fire. The Corrals may yet reach their dream of a better life, but they’ve first had to detour through a week of abject poverty that forced Corral to question everything from herself to her beliefs.

Then, it was the kindness of strangers that provided the answers.

When they rolled into Spokane, the Corrals parked their trailer in the back yard of a nephew. One night, everyone was out at a movie except one daughter. The home had not yet been connected with electricity.

The girl was in the trailer reading by candlelight. When she went into the house for a minute, she left the candle burning. That’s all it took. When the family returned home, the trailer was a smoldering pile of ash, and the fire trucks were just leaving.

“I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to do,” Corral said. “Everything we had was in that trailer.”

The family was left with just the clothes they were wearing.

For the next few days, they stayed with Corral’s nephew. But with eight people in the house, it was “like a railway station,” with people coming and going constantly, Corral said.

Though she tried to get help from various agencies, Corral was told she needed a fire report - something she hadn’t received from the fire department.

Firefighters believed the trailer was for just storage. Though firefighters toured the nephew’s home, installed a fire alarm and waited until Avista was able to turn the electricity back on, no one ever mentioned that the trailer was actually the home of a family of four, said Jan Doherty, public education officer for the Fire Department.

It was not until Doherty made a follow-up call to Corral four days later that someone realized what the family was going through.

“We had no money. We had no where to go,” Corral remembered. She started to doubt everything - herself, her abilities and her religion.

“It was a deep, dark challenge for me,” she said. “I had to really think, `If can’t take care of my kids, what am I gonna do?”’ But Doherty’s call - followed by a note from Connie Thoorsell at Cooper Elementary School, where her youngest daughter is a student - changed all that.

Having heard of the Corral’s loss through the school grapevine, Thoorsell sent a note home with Corral’s daughter saying that she’d like to talk with her.

“She told me, `I’m here to help you,”’ Corral said. “After trying to get help for a week…my heart was so heavy, and that lifted me up. I thought, `Oh my God, we’re going to get help!”’

As Corral shared her story, she and Thoorsell cried together, then joked and laughed.

As Thoorsell started telling the school staff, she said money just started rolling in.

“The staff has always been generous, but I didn’t even have to ask,” she said. “People just saw the look on my face and said, `What can we do?’ It’s awesome.”

They donated about $500 to the Corrals - enough for Thoorsell to go out with Corral and buy new clothes, shoes and jackets for all of her children. She also located a food bank that would help them out.

“It was a total blessing,” Corral said. “Connie is like an angel.”

Doherty hooked Corral up with the Red Cross, which provided necessities plus money to put toward a rental house. She was able to find one on East Diamond, and the landlord even kicked in some used furniture.

“Now, there’s lots we don’t have, and it’ll take us a while to get back what we had, but at least we’re all together,” Corral said. “At least no one was lost in the fire.

“I’m so grateful for all the people who helped us - people who didn’t even know us. It’s amazing to know there are people out there who are there for people who need help.”