LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – You may remember the images from early June an apartment in Henderson fully engulfed in flames.
A mother and her son lost a dog and almost everything they owned in that fire.
FOX5 introduced you to them in the days that followed, and the community, responded to our story with an outpouring of support.
Mattheo Diaz arrived home on June 6th to see the apartment he shared with his mother for the past ten years on fire.
“And I get back and I can see this massive plume of smoke, and I’m like please don’t let that be my building, don’t let that be my building. And as I got closer and closer, it was my building,” he told us during a conversation days after the incident.
Mattheo’s mom escaped with her life. Neighbors rescued one of their two dogs, but a two-year-old Husky did not get out.
When the smoke had settled, almost nothing was salvageable.
“A lot of my clothes, and most of my mom’s clothes, were either seriously smoke-damaged or burn-damaged, so we would kind of be wearing the same things daily, day in and day out.”
Mattheo and his mom needed just about everything, and the Valley responded.
“So we saw Mattheo’s story on FOX5 news and we wanted to reach out and give them some help to get started again,” says Justin Woo, co-founder of Vegas Helps.
“Vegas Helps was created to do what we call small acts of kindness, little acts to just kind of help our community get together, it’s not like those grand gestures that are also part of our amazing community, but just chances to give someone a little extra support,” says co founder Lydia Ansel.
But they weren’t the only ones who answered the call.
“Miss Trisha from Mattress Mania provided two queen-sized mattress for my mom and I. She had her son come by and deliver it to us,” says Mattheo. “If we didn’t have the mattresses, we were, for a while sleeping on camping cots. Those aren’t exactly the most comfortable for your back, so we would not be sleeping most comfortably.”
And a friend gifted Mattheo with the computer he needed to finish his degree.
“If I didn’t have the donated laptop from my friend Matt, not only would I have difficulties with starting up my summer semester and future fall semester, but I would also have difficulty with work. I work for a law firm in Miami and Broward remotely, and I need that computer for work, so I wouldn’t have that for work either.”
Matteo says people have also donated dog supplies, food, and money through their GoFundMe account.
“If I’m being honest, completely honest, I was kind of losing my kind of faith in society being empathetic. The community support that we have gotten has really shown me that not just society as a whole, people as a whole are empathetic, but that Las Vegas as a whole is very, despite us being known as a commuter town, we’re a very close-knit community.”
And he says that this new perspective has had a profound effect on him.
“After such a…the fire…and seeing this it’s actually changing some ways I see things, some ways, um, some ways I might do things in the future,” he says. “It’s…I…I…yeah…it’s very overwhelmingly appreciated, yeah.”
When we first spoke to Mattheo he questioned whether he would be able to take summer classes at UNLV. He’s now confident he’ll be ready to graduate at the end of the fall semester. And he’s not the only one who may get the gift of an education.
Vegas Helps gave the family a second computer, so now his mom is thinking about going back to school herself.
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