Cindy Lange-Kubick: Family gets a home for the holidays

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This story is for those among us who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believe in magic and goodness and happy endings and Santa Claus.

Like the girl with shiny brown hair who rode the city bus to school and called a motel room home.

Like the girl’s school counselor and the girl’s teacher who both cared so much about a 9-year-old that they started to dream of something much better for her life.

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Deb Biggs, a counselor at Campbell Elementary, stuffs stockings in an apartment she and other volunteers from the school arraigned for a homeless family of three. (William Lauer)

Deb Biggs, a counselor at Campbell Elementary, stuffs stockings in an apartment she and other volunteers from the school arraigned for a homeless family of three. (William Lauer)

Like the counselor’s friends and the teacher’s friends who helped the dream happen.

Simply because they heard this story:

A girl with shiny brown hair went to Campbell Elementary School this fall.

She went there after her parents lost their house and pawned all of their belongings, after she spent a week sleeping in a tent at the lake because they had no place else — but before their car got wrecked, and her dad had a heart attack and they ended up in an furnished room in a motel at the edge of town.

The girl’s mom called the school one morning to say her daughter would be late because of a problem with the bus.

The counselor talked to the mom.

Do you want me to come get you, Deb Biggs asked.

The girl’s mom couldn’t speak. All she could do was cry.

When she finally stopped, she said they would wait for another bus and when she got to the school she sat in the counselor’s office and couldn’t stop talking.

The mom told the counselor about not being able to make their house payments and about sleeping in the car. About driving to an AA meeting and getting hit and, then, poof, no more car. About her husband’s heart attack, and poof, no more truck driving job, but that she was working now and they were trying hard to get back on their feet.

She told her that she and her husband had tried their best to shelter their daughter — a girl with shiny hair who loved doll houses and stuffed animals and make-believe — and they wanted her to be happy despite all the grown-ups problems in her world.

That’s when the counselor had an idea.

She talked to the girl’s teacher.

Wouldn’t it be great if they could find the girl’s family an apartment and pay the rent through the end of the school year? The family could start saving money for a car and their daughter would have people surrounding her every day with love.

The two women asked the staff at Campbell for help — and they gave. The teacher sent an e-mail to her friends. And the counselor sent an e-mail to her friends. And they all gave.

It was like being in George Bailey’s living room on Christmas Eve.

The money came pouring in from the least likely places and it made their hearts so warm.

Last Wednesday night, the counselor invited the girl and her family into the living room of an apartment down the hill from Campbell School.

The apartment had beds and furniture and pictures on the walls and a Christmas tree with lights and presents and an angel on top. The deposit and months worth of rent had been paid.

Merry Christmas, she told them. Welcome to your new home.

The girl’s mom cried and the girl’s dad cried.

The girl thought the apartment was really cool.

But she had a question. She’d written to Santa and he thought she lived at the motel on the edge of town. How would he find her here?

Don’t worry, said the apartment complex handyman, who had joined in on the project, too. That’s why the post office has change-of- address forms.

That settled, five days before Christmas, the family moved into their new home, down the street from the girl’s school near 27th and Superior.

Her mom remembered sitting in front of Wal-Mart with sacks of groceries a few days earlier, waiting for a cab to take her home. Normally, she went crazy decorating, happy as could be for the holidays. This year she felt blue and crabby.

I can’t wait until this Christmas is over, she told the girl’s dad.

And then this. Like a dream it was so wonderful.

“We haven’t had a lot of hope lately,” she said, sitting in her new living room next to a girl playing with a ceramic Mary and Joseph and a baby in a manger.

“We have hope again.“

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com