Having a lot of money isn’t the only way someone can be rich.
Even if residents of Westside Mobile Park may struggle to make ends meet, they’re rich in another way: They have a community that would put their lives on the line to help each other, said the park’s Community Service Representative Alejandra Chacon.
Mariselva Ponce de Leon learned that lesson last month when she received a call that her mobile home had been engulfed in flames.
The fire, which began in Ponce de Leon’s kitchen, quickly spread throughout the rest of her home. Chacon said as soon as the blaze started Ponce de Leon’s neighbors rushed to help, some cutting and bruising themselves as they broke into the burning building with buckets of water trying to extinguish the flames.
“I told them don’t ever do that again, don’t ever put your life in danger,” said Chacon. “Everyone said, ‘You have to understand we were saving her house,’ and I said, ‘I understand, but we can get materials back, we can’t get our lives back.’”
As the fire was still raging, Ponce de Leon said her niece, Ariana, who also lived in the mobile home, threw a rock through a window and dived into the mobile home to save her immigration visa from the fire, managing to escape with her papers unburned but with cuts and bruises covering her legs.
Ponce de Leon, speaking through a Spanish translator, said she was touched by the risks her neighbors took trying to save her home, but told them, “Don’t do that anymore!”
Chacon said the next day after the fire was put out she texted the WhatsApp group chat for the mobile home park asking them to help Ponce de Leon recover whatever she could from the burned husk of her home.
Over 30 people quickly assembled, all of whom Ponce de Leon said she knew well, and helped her pull out an unburned dresser filled with clothes, a bed frame, and most importantly, a safe containing Ponce de Leon’s legal documents and family photos.
After the fire, Common Good Management Services, the property managers of Westside Mobile Park, created a GoFundMe to raise money for Ponce de Leon to purchase a new mobile home. As of Monday evening the fundraiser has raised $9,740 of its $20,000 goal.
To Donate
On the GoFundMe website, search “Help the Ponce de Leon family rebuild after fire.”
Ponce de Leon’s displacement from her home came two years after more than half the community faced displacement when the old owner notified residents they planned to sell the property to a company notorious for rent hikes.
The residents banded together then as well, forming a co-op, and after an arduous monthslong process with multiple offer rejections, purchased the park with the help of Elevation Community Land Trust. Since then, rents have gone down $100, Chacon said.
Since the fire, Ponce de Leon has been staying with her daughter who also lives in Westside Mobile Park, whose small trailer is now being used to house 10 people.
“I appreciate my daughter giving me a place to stay but it’s a really small place so we’re really tight,” Ponce de Leon said.
While speaking with The Durango Herald on Friday, Ponce de Leon’s translator informed her that First Southwest Bank had donated $8,000, more than doubling the amount of money that had already raised.
“It gives me hope that I can fight and find something else,” said Ponce de Leon, smiling and laughing at the good news.
Ponce de Leon said she plans to buy another mobile home and continue living in Westside Mobile Park.
“I want to stay here because my daughter and grandkids are here, it’s an economic place to live, and there’s a lot of support from the community,” she said. “I feel like I’m living in between family.”
nmetcalf@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect name for Common Good Management Services.
