Horizon City Family Gets Help From Community

Wednesday afternoon the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Community Services Section hosted an event to help a Horizon City family. Late last month, the Lunas lost two mobile homes and three vehicles in their property.

“Seeing everything go … it’s not really a good feeling. We’re a pretty strong family, though, so we’re going to start rebuilding and moving forward,” said homeowner Ricardo Luna when ABC-7 first featured his family last week.

Luna told ABC-7 the fire started at about 1 p.m. on March 26th. Nobody was inside the home at the time because most of the family was visiting a relative seven hours away.

“As soon as we heard about the fire we threw everything back in the van and came back over here,” Luna said.

Luna said the flames caused about $30,000 in damage and left his family of seven homeless, including four adults, one child, one teenager and a 1-month-old baby girl.

Last weekend, neighbors and members of Horizon High School’s JROTC went to the Lunas’ property to help clear debris and offer support.

“Sometimes it takes things like this to really start seeing the people around you. They’re real good people,” Luna said.

Those “good people” include members of the Explorers program, run by the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. They presented the Lunas with a $500 check Wednesday afternoon and offered them volunteer services.

“About two years ago, one of our very own explorers lost her house basically in the same way, in a fire. It really hit home for the (explorers), and they wanted to do something for (the Luna family),” said the group’s commander.

The Lunas said they’re still in need of donations since all their belongings were lost in the fire, including supplies they had just gotten for the baby.

If you’re interested in helping out, just go to the Teacher’s Federal Credit Union. The account number is 168115 under “Maria Luna.”