A man’s home is his castle…because where else in the world can the average human be King or Queen? When we bought our home over 40 years ago we knew it had, the makings of our very own castle. We never made tons of money in our freelance art/photography business, but whatever extra money we had went in to projects on the house, and over the years and that became our savings. Most of the work we did ourselves with the help of family involved in various construction trades and because we rather enjoyed laying tile and designing arches and skylights. Our house became the Hooper compound, nice enough that family from around the country would gather on holidays, friends and often models could stay, big enough for cats, dogs, wounded birds and lost bunnies and even room for our son’s rock & roll band to rehearse. Eventually we built our dream studio out back, knowing we may someday have to work from home.

Then the recession hit, our business took a dive and like a lot of Americans, that money we had saved in the real estate we lived in, disappeared in an instant. Meanwhile, we had gotten old. We could no longer do the big repairs on our lovely but aging home and we certainly didn’t have the money to pay someone else to do it.

Then the rains came. Our dry, dry desert saw more rain in the last few years than in my entire life. The flat roof designed for these old desert homes was never meant for that kind of rain and the leaks began. Soon we were underwater, literally. Buckets of water came in during the monsoon season and each storm deteriorated the roof more. We took to putting large sheets of plastic on the roof, held down by bricks when we knew rain was coming, which became useless when winds accompanied the storms. We kept buckets and pop coolers around, ready to catch the worst of the downpour. My poor mama with Alzheimer’s who lives with us, couldn’t understand the panic as we dashed around covering furniture with plastic so the water didn’t destroy everything.

By the time we called Rebuilding Together Southern Nevada we were desperate, figuring the roof was going to fall in on our heads if we didn’t get some help. Our hope was to get a little assistance with labor on repairing the worst places on the roof, and try some bartering on local construction sites for leftover materials as we had done in the past. Whatever it took to keep us from going underwater.

What we got was far beyond our expectations. Rebuilding Together is a nonprofit that provides home repair, accessibility modifications and energy conservation services for low-income homeowners, seniors, veterans, multi-family households and people living with disabilities. Businesses like Sears, Lowes and local construction companies contribute and provide materials and volunteers are recruited to do most of the work.

In our case, the volunteers came from the United States Air Force at Nellis who literally “adopted” our house. That’s what “Heroes at Home” is all about. These incredible soldiers who offer their lives for America overseas, come home and volunteer their time to help make the neighborhoods they are stationed in a little bit better. What they did for us was incredible. It turns out, because they received an abundance of materials, they decided to replace the entire roof on our home.

A crew of young men and women came every day for a couple weeks tearing down and building on the roof. Not only did they fix the roof, but they replaced some ancient plumbing inside that had leaked for years and even redid our lawn with rock to save us money and a lot of future work.

We made this film to celebrate the hard work and dedication these people put into making our lives better and insuring that we could stay in our castle for many more years. They are truly “Heroes at Home” and they are awesome!

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