Snow began to fall along the banks of the Animas River as the sun dipped behind Smelter Mountain the evening Feb. 15. Temperatures soon settled below zero.

Aquila Cota had a tent set up along the Animas River, north of theDoubleTree intersection on the west side of Durango. The small nylon enclosure, intended to sleep one person, had been his home since La Plata County closed the Purple Cliffs camp at the end of September.

“I’m getting tired of living outdoors,” Cota said as he stood under the falling snow. “I’m 53 years old and I’ve had it.”

Two days later, on Friday morning, he walked into an apartment filled with boxes of food and kitchen wares ready to be unpacked. He signed his name to a lease, and he was home.

“I like it so far,” he said. “Now I just have to get used to it.”

Cota, who goes by his last name in daily life, had not lived indoors for close to four years. He said he did not sleep very well his first few nights in the apartment.

“The first couple days, it felt weird,” he said in an interview Monday.

Cota received the one-bedroom apartment, which is one of the affordable housing units in Lumien Apartments located off East 32nd Street, by way of Housing Solutions for the Southwest.

After the closure of Purple Cliffs, he joined a waitlist for affordable housing units in Durango. When the unit in Lumien became available, Cota received notification that he had been selected to move in there and that he had received a state housing voucher to pay the rent.

Through the coordinated entry system, Cota entered a pool of applicants from which he was chosen based on vulnerability as well as his fit into the community.

Advocates working for organizations that provide assistance and services to the houseless population in and around Durango know Cota well, and say he is known for his tremendous selflessness.

As a show of gratitude, the Neighbors in Need Alliance organized a donation drive to equip him with furnishings for his new place. As the elevator doors opened on his floor, Cota grabbed the heaviest box.

This is how Caroline Kinser, chairwoman of NINA’s board, got to know Cota. When she and other advocates would show up to Purple Cliffs with food, Cota would always help unload the car.

“He single-handedly saved the Cliffs,” Kinser said.

She was referring to Cota’s diligent efforts to maintain the portable toilets that NINA had worked to bring to the campsite, which housed more than 100 people during peak seasons. Two vendors had pulled their toilets from the site after campers threw trash into them.

When the county secured a third vendor, the campsites’ future was on the line. Without toilets, campers would have to leave with no plan in place whatsoever.

But thanks to Cota, that did not happen. NINA provided a small stipend, and for two years he kept the facilities clean. Every Sunday, Cota cooked breakfast burritos for the camp’s residents.

After the county announced the camp’s impending closure, Cota became a liaison and worked to ensure that families and those with children received housing.

“Cota always said he didn’t want to get housed until the people with children were housed – he always told me that,” said Christina Bolt, the participant support manager at Manna soup kitchen. “He was very instrumental in bringing those families to us (and) reminding those families of what they needed to do.”

Cota said he was just focused on the task at hand.

“When everybody started getting housing, when they said the cliffs were closing, I wasn’t worried about it,” he said. “I was trying to help everybody else. ... After a while, being out here in the cold, I’m done.”

To decline affordable housing in Durango is no small matter. Bolt said that very few apartments accept the voucher that Cota received. In her year on the job, Bolt said he is the first person she is aware of to move into Lumien using a permanent housing voucher.

Remarkably, the biting cold of the last few months has not left Cota embittered. He is modest when speaking of his volunteer work – he volunteers at the Community Compassion Outreach warming shelter on the two days per week that it is open – and understated in describing his overdue good fortune.

“They picked me because of all the hard work I’ve done before,” he said. “(It’s) weird. I’m not used to that. I’m used to just doing what I have to do to survive.”

Given that he no longer has to dedicate his time to the bare essentials required to survive, Cota said he’ll begin to search for a part-time job.

“It’s hard to find a job when you have no way to clean up, shave, get a haircut, have clean clothes,” he said. “... (Now) options are open – that’s the way I see it.”

Still, he has no intentions of turning his back on his community.

“I’m still going to help out wherever I can,” he said. “I’m still going to volunteer, I’m not going to stop just because I got a place, I’m not going to turn my back on people. I’ve been there, I know what it’s like.”

Standing in the apartment, every surface was covered in items that needed to be unpacked. But it was a Friday, and the warming shelter where Cota volunteers was open.

“I still gotta go to work later on,” he said.

rschafir@durangoherald.com