Grand Junction – For the past several months, Brian Marti has been busy stringing thousands of tiny red, white and blue beads on safety pins in a flag pattern. Ralph Chavez has been piecing together jigsaw puzzle after jigsaw puzzle and shellacking them so they can hang on walls.
Their fellow brain-injured residents at the Hilltop Life Adjustment Program have been nailing together birdhouses, painting clay pots and lacing up sunglass holders. They are also collecting cans, washing cars and placing containers around their facility where any staff member who utters a curse word must deposit a quarter.
This flurry of entrepreneuring is their enthusiastic effort to raise money for a new community center at a unique residential program in Colorado and – judging by widespread referrals – in the country.
The Life Adjustment Program is a home for 65 clients whose brains have been permanently injured by drunken drivers, tumors, lightning strikes, bullets or domestic violence.
Before Hilltop Community Resources opened this residential center in 1985, the residents would have been released from hospitals and sent to nursing homes.
Here they live independently, but with 24-hour support – in apartments grouped around a grassy commons area. They have meals and activities in a community center that has grown cramped over the years.
When Hilltop decided to kick off a campaign to raise $3 million to build a new center, the clients were some of the first to step up to the plate.
They had meetings and decided they would make and sell craft items, with their biggest sale aimed at the annual weekend in September when their parents come from across the country for a special family gathering.
The clients had already raised $1,000 when an anonymous donor was recently moved by their enthusiasm and pledged to match every dollar they raised up to $5,000.
“They couldn’t be more excited and enthusiastic about trying to help,” said Hilltop program director Barbara Burch.
That enthusiasm grew following the donor’s pledge, and the clients have been strategizing on even more moneymaking enterprises.
“We are selling a lot,” Marti said as he bent over his bead work.
The clients have also contributed to the designs for the new 13,440-square-foot center, which will have a floor for office buildings, rooms for medical care, a library, a kitchen and a dining hall – one much larger than in the current 3,726- square-foot building.
The clients have made suggestions on everything from lighting to the creation of private spaces for phone calls.
“They are really getting so excited about what this new center is going to look like,” said Hilltop marketing director Barbara Salogga.
Salogga said that so far clients, other individuals, staff members, families of clients, foundations and Hilltop itself have raised $2,250,522. Hilltop plans to break ground in February and have the building complete in a year.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
