Focus | Home Depot’s helping hands

  
Story by Chris Graham
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The only thing Kat Carr was missing – “a bullhorn.”

“Otherwise, yeah, I’d say it was kind of like the TV show,” said Carr, one of 25 Waynesboro Home Depot store employees that spent most of their days on Tuesday volunteering their time on the Rebuilding Together project at the Maple Avenue, Waynesboro, home of the Martins, including Joseph Martin, 12, who is in a wheelchair after 40 surgeries to correct a litany of birth defects.

The project has the feel of the popular television series “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” in which the crew and host Ty Pennington retrofit homes for families with members facing a variety of physical challenges. Joseph Martin was able up until recently to get around on his own despite his physical limitations, but now has trouble getting to his second-floor bedroom and taking care of basic things like brushing his teeth and bathing in the 1920s-era home.

Rebuilding Together, the Waynesboro YMCA and the Crozet Baptist Church have taken the lead on the local makeover project that will give Joseph a first-floor bed and bath and make the kitchen and laundry room wheelchair-accessible.

Home Depot got involved quite by chance when Carr and a group of Waynesboro Home Depot employees were assigned to the Martins’ home after signing up for a local United Way volunteer workday in September.

“We just thought somebody’s hand was working in it, because we ended up over here,” said Carr, an inventory specialist at the local Home Depot. Meeting Joseph and his mother, Mary, Carr was blown away when Mary showed the volunteers a DVD on Joseph’s story highlighting his medical and home-life struggles.

“I don’t think there was a dry eye out there,” said Carr, who returned to Home Depot with a copy of the DVD, “and I remember telling people, We have to get involved. We have to do something.”

That was back in September. It took some time to jump through the bureaucratic hoops to get corporate behind the project, but Carr felt from the outset that it would happen.

“The store manager allowed us to show the DVD to all the associates. We never had so many people sign up in our store to do a Team Depot project,” Carr said.

By chance, the district manager for Home Depot happened to be in the store that night. Carr got the go-ahead to make the Martin project a district project for Home Depot, resulting in the donation of pressure-treated lumber, paint and eventually a $5,500 gift card to Rebuilding Together to go toward a number of project needs.

Volunteers from Home Depot stores in Waynesboro, Harrisonburg and the Richmond area were on-site Tuesday and will be back Thursday helping with demolition work inside the home and also working on wheelchair ramps.

“And these are all volunteers. They don’t get paid for being out here,” Carr said.

“We’re just doing our small part to help make this new reality for this family,” Carr said.