In the summer of 2015, Richard Dubiel, 75, of Fremont, California, spent months trying to re-roof his house by himself. One Saturday, roughly twenty people showed up to finish his roof.
Two doors down on Murphy Court, David Perez could see Richard up there from his living room window. "It was hard to watch," Perez said. "I was feeling sorry for someone that age up there all by himself."
Perez did not know how to roof, and he said so plainly. What he did know was Facebook. He took a picture of Richard on the roof and posted it with a request to anyone with roofing skills: "I would like to see if anyone can donate their time to help him finish." He suggested people come by on Saturday morning, starting at 9.
Perez had barely 100 Facebook friends at the time. The post was shared more than 1,000 times before Saturday. A few people commented that they planned to come. Perez went to bed Friday night worried that nobody would show up at 9.
They did not show up at 9. They showed up earlier. This is how Perez described the morning.
I woke up and looked out my window at 7:30 and there were already people on the roof.
By mid-morning roughly twenty people were working, most of them with roofing experience. They came from Tracy, San Jose, Livermore and San Mateo. Almost none of them knew Perez or Dubiel before that Saturday.
Bob Valdez, a roofer with 18 years of experience, drove in from Tracy with his young son.
The crew that came to finish his roof was done a little after noon. The volunteers called Richard over to put in the final shingle himself. "I had become pretty discouraged," he said, "by what people do to each other that’s not good." Afterward he said, "I’m just in awe."
The report does not say why Richard was doing the work himself, what the roof cost, or who paid for the materials. It does not say what happened after that day. Valdez did say why he brought his son.
My father taught me that it’s important to help others, and I want my son to see that.
Someone said it out loud
David Perez could not roof a house. What he could do was show his neighbors what he saw from his window, and ask. The people who knew how to do the work read his post and showed up to finish his roof before anyone told them to.
The skill was already close by, a few cities away and ready. What was missing was somebody saying what was needed where people could see it. It went the same way in Ohio, where a high school football team built a wheelchair ramp after the group that planned to build it had to cancel.
These neighbors did not use MeetaNeed. It did not exist in their story. It is the reason we built MeetaNeed, so that the next person on a roof alone has a place to say so.
Where this story comes from
Originally reported by NBC Bay Area (KNTV) in its Bay Area Proud series, by Garvin Thomas, published August 29, 2015 and updated August 30, 2015. Retold here with the details as that report gives them.
