By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
Two Bunkerville youngsters did a good deed and made someone’s day earlier this month. Noma and Duke Houston were publicly recognized for their kind act during a meeting of the Mesquite City Council held on Tuesday evening, June 25.
The story begins on June 12 when local resident Karen Ramirez went to play volleyball at the Bunkerville Park. While playing, she suddenly noticed that a bracelet that she had been wearing on her wrist had gone missing.
This was not just any bracelet. It had tremendous sentimental value. Karen’s grandmother had given her the bracelet when she was first born. Karen had treasured it ever since and worn it throughout her life.
That night, Karen and her friends searched the park for two hours looking for the lost item with no luck.
The next morning, Karen posted her dilemma on social media. She offered a reward of $1,000 to anyone who returned it to her.
That post quickly was brought to the attention of the sibling team of Noma, age 9, and her brother Duke, 12.
“We saw that post and, of course, you always joke around about like ‘Wow! a thousand dollars! Can you imagine?’” said the kids’ mom Denise Houston in an interview last week. “They were just hanging around at home that day so I said, ‘Why don’t you guys head to the park.’ I figured they had a good chance of finding it. They are kids on a mission after all.”
Within twenty minutes the two children had come back with the lost bracelet.
“I was like, ‘Oh wow!’” Denise said. “It had started with, you know, that it was worth a shot to try and help her find the bracelet. But I wasn’t really expecting much.”
Now that the item was recovered, though, Denise immediately saw it as a learning experience for the kids.
“We sat down and had a conversation,” she said. “We talked about how this was (Karen’s) bracelet and why would we charge her to get her bracelet back? And what if you lost something, do you think you should pay for it to get it back?”
It didn’t take long for the children to see the situation from the other point of view.
“I gave them their full choice and it was all their decision,” Denise said. “But they were so quick to recognize what was the right thing to do. They said, ‘You’re right mom. This is what we need to do.’”
They made contact with Ramirez and informed her that they had found the item but that no reward was necessary.
Ramirez dropped by the Houston’s home to pick up the bracelet. “I really didn’t understand the extent of the value of that bracelet to her until she came by,” Denise said. “It was so important to her. So we were glad to get it back to her.”
Denise said that she was proud of her children for their choice. “That is a lot of money even for an adult,” she said. “But for a kid, it is like a million dollars! So it turned into a really great lesson for them about not needing to be paid to do the right thing.”
But that was not the end of the story. Mesquite resident Carly Toutant, director of local non-profit R.A.I.S.E. Mesquite, saw this story unfolding on social media and felt that something more needed to be done for the young Houston heroes.
She took to social media and asked for suggestions on what might be done to reward the kids.
R.A.I.S.E. volunteer Ron Shackelford responded suggesting that a donation might be taken up to pay for a day at Fiesta Fun in St. George, Utah for the whole Houston family. This idea caught on and community members pitched in to help raise the funds.
“It didn’t take long for our community to reach out and make donations and make this a special day for this family,” Shackelford said during a public comment before the City Council last week.
Shackelford presented Noma and Duke – as well as their whole family – with gift cards to the popular family attraction. These included five hours of unlimited activities, two games of bowling, money for the arcade and a large 16-inch family pizza dinner with breadsticks and soda. In addition, Shackelford presented Denise with a gas card for transportation.
“Knowing Denise as long as I have known her, I wouldn’t expect anything other than this with a family like that,” commented Mesquite mayor Al Litman after the brief presentation at city council.
“R.A.I.S.E Mesquite loves to make children shine,” said Carly Toutant in a statement last week for The Progress. “Older residents here in Mesquite love to help out children and families. What a great way to make the miracle of finding the bracelet a teachable moment for other children!”
