Staff writer

Joy Thomason could not give enough thanks to the group who spent a week building her deck, replacing her floor, and painting parts of her house.

"They are amazing, just amazing people," she said.

More than 800 kids and young adults, some from as far away as Illinois and Michigan, camped out in Hurricane High School over the last two weeks to do handiwork on the houses of Hurricane's low income families.

The work is done through a Christian youth retreat called Reach. Each summer, Reach holds work camps in several different towns across the country, where the goal is to help families with housework they can't afford. The program has been coming to Hurricane, off and on, since 2000.

The kids are chaperoned by adults and sleep on air mattresses and cots in classrooms at Hurricane High during their stay. One adult chaperone is required for every five children.

Reach was in Hurricane for two weeks, ending this weekend. After the first week ended on July 24, an older group of kids moved into the high school a day later and continued work on the houses.

"We're doing anything we can to help fix up houses in the community," said Stephen Dunwoody, 18, of Weddington, N.C.

The kids attend Reach through their local church youth groups. Seven youth groups from Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Michigan, and Ohio worked on Thomason's house in the program's first week.

Thomason said she helped the kids work on her house. She also ate lunch with them and attended their devotional meetings, which they held every work session. Reach workers refer to the families they help as "neighbors," and Dunwoody's group was happy to have Thomason as theirs.

"I don't think we could have asked for a better neighbor," said Paige Goody, 16, of New Philadelphia, Ohio. 

Mike Kefauver of Chicago, one of the chaperones working at Thomason's house, has been going to Reach work camps for 17 years.

Kefauver said he always marvels at how well behaved and willing to work the are.

"They're all good kids," he said. "I've never had a bad one."

Hurricane town officials raised $10,000 in order to pay for the food and building supplies needed to host the work camp for its two weeks. The money was then divvied out to the various youth groups so they could buy building supplies.

Hurricane City Manager Ben Newhouse said that Reach is well worth the money. He estimates that for every dollar put into the program, the city gains ten dollars in revenue since the visitors presumably buy their food, fuel, and supplies locally.

Town officials and full-time Reach employees pre-screen potential houses, which are chosen based on need, months before the work camp starts. More than 150 houses applied for the program this year; 65 were worked on, Newhouse said.

Thomason said she applied for the program because her monthly stipend from child support is not enough to pay for home repairs. Before Reach came to fix her porch, she was afraid it would collapse on the mailman.

Jane Hodges of Teays Lane also had her house worked on.

"They told me as long as I don't have a Cadillac sitting out front, they'd help me out," she said.

As it turns out, Hodges has a late-model Buick - and a fixed income. She recently fell off a chair and injured her tailbone. The injury prevents her from doing physical labor, and she welcomes any help fixing her house.

"It means the world to me," she said.

To Thomason, the fact that Reach ended today is bittersweet. On one hand, her house is much more livable. On the other hand, the friends she made in the last two weeks are leaving.

"I'll be really sad when they leave because I'm attached to the boys and girls, all of them," she said.

The connection will still be there. One of the groups working on Thomason's house wrote their names on a piece of wood and gave it to her before they left.

"That's something I can treasure," she said. 

Reach Zac Taylor at zachary.tay...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5189.