Local Efforts Help Bunkerville Family

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

A growing crowd of Virgin Valley residents have been stepping up to help a neighbor in need. Over the past two weeks, a significant number of service projects, raffles, bake sales and other fundraising events have been held to help the family of Junior Flores and Brenda Carillo rebuild after a fire destroyed their home earlier this month.

“We are so extremely grateful to this community for the love that has been shown to our family,” said Junior Flores in an interview last week. “And that love just keeps pouring in. There is truly not enough ‘thank-you’s’ in the world for what everyone is doing and what they continue to do for us.”

Junior Flores grew up in the Virgin Valley community and graduated from VVHS. He is well-known in the community as a person who is civic-minded and service-oriented. He owns Clark County Printing which serves many local businesses and individuals with print and graphics services. And over the past season he has also coached the Virgin Valley High School Boys Soccer team.

Junior and Brenda have four children ages 15, 12, 6 and 3. So it was especially difficult when, on November 4, an electrical problem in a bathroom exhaust fan caused a house fire. No one in the family was hurt, but the fire destroyed their Bunkerville home causing a total loss to the structure and nearly everything in it. The family is staying with Junior’s parents while they figure out what to do about rebuilding.

“It has been hard for the kids, especially the younger ones,” Flores said. “But all things considered, they are handling it like champs.”

Flores admitted that it was hard for him as well, particularly at this time of year.
“It is hard for my wife and me but we have got to be strong for the family,” he said. “And we have to keep everyone together. We just take it day by day.”

But the loss has brought an outpouring of service from the community. There have been many independent efforts in town to help the Flores family.

One of these was brought about by Paula Stanton who works part time for Colonial Property Management in Mesquite. Stanton also owns her own cottage industry bakery called Sweet William’s Bake Shop. She specializes in custom birthday cakes, filled cupcakes and other delicacies.
Stanton said that she has interacted with Junior from time to time in a business capacity. He does a lot of printing for many of the HOAs that Colonial manages.
“He does good work and has always been friendly to me,” she said.

When she heard about the fire, Stanton said that she felt empathy for the family, especially with the young children facing the holiday season. She felt strongly that there must be something that she could do. And a gourmet bake sale seemed like the perfect fit.

“We always talk about Mesquite being such a giving and generous little town,” Stanton said. “So I thought, here is a time to show that. Let’s come together and help this family rebuild their lives.”
Stanton quickly spread the word among her friends and co-workers, and also on social media.
Quickly she had a group of people who were eager to bake some goodies and donate them to the sale. Of course, Stanton made many of her own best baked morsels to add into the mix.
“We even had one man who contacted me and said he wanted to help, even though he doesn’t bake,” Stanton said. “He donated $100 to the effort.”

The bake sale took place on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 19 at the Colonial Property office. Stanton said that she was humbled and pleased by the response. That sale alone brought in more than $600 to the cause.
Stanton noted that sometimes it easy to see division in the community. But Mesquite always comes together when needed, she said.

“You often find people in city council meetings who are at each other’s throats,” Stanton said. “But then you find those same people working together side-by-side when a need arises in the community. We are pretty good at putting aside our differences and helping people out when they need it.”

There have been many other fundraising efforts put into motion as well. Carley Toutant of R.A.I.S.E. Mesquite immediately has jumped to the task of coordinating fundraising and donation drive efforts in the community. She sent out calls for help via social media. That call was heard and answered in various ways.

“We had one lady who contacted me wanting to help,” Toutant said. “She had a 2020 MacBook Pro computer, pretty much new and still in the box, that she hadn’t really ever used. She wanted to donate it to Junior because his laptop was destroyed in the fire. He used it in his side work as a DJ. It was a very generous gesture.”

Toutant said that the floodgates had been open on donations from local residents of all kinds of items including furniture, household goods and, of course, money.

“It became a bit of a problem because all of a sudden we have all of these donated items and they don’t have a house to put them in,” Toutant said. “So we are working on getting a storage space, to keep all of this stuff until they have a home for it.”

Toutant and R.A.I.S.E. also coordinated a community bake sale which took place on Saturday at the Yucca Street Holiday Festival in Mesquite. The support was overwhelming. The group sold out by 12:30 pm and raised more than $1,000.

Blanca Villareal, a friend of the Flores family, decided to sell her beloved homemade tamales to help in the fundraising effort. Her daughter Kayla Valdovinos helped her to get the word out in the community about the sale offering tamales for $20 per dozen. By Saturday they had more than 50 orders. A group of family and friends got together to make more than 1,200 tamales for the sale.

Professional photographer John Bolier, who makes real estate photos for EXP Realty, heard about the fire and decided to pitch in and help the family. He and EXP Realty donated a 24” x 36” aerial photo John had made with a drone, of a beautiful sunrise at Wolf Creek Golf Course, printed on metal. The photo is to be raffled off this week to help raise funds for the Flores family.

“I didn’t know them really well,” Bolier said of the Flores family in an interview last week. “But I like to do fundraisers for people in situations like this where they can’t really help what has happened to them. This one kind of pulled at my heart strings a little and I felt like I needed to help.”

The fundraising efforts continue in the community. A GoFundMe page called “Building back the Flores Fundraiser” was set up the day after the fire by family friend Marisa Moreno. Within a few days, dozens of area residents had visited the site to make donations for the family. Nearly $7,500 has been raised thus far with the goal of raising $50,000.

Donations can be made at https://gofund.me/091b13e1.