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McALLEN — The first nine hours of Maria Laura Salgado’s 12-hour shift were uneventful for the most part.
In her 11 years working as a caregiver at Comfort House, she’d fallen into the routine that the workers at the facility all share — providing a loving, comforting environment for individuals in the last moments of their lives.
Those working the late shift, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., spend their time making rounds, or “rondas,” with each patient, checking their charts and administering medication, cleaning their areas, and repositioning them every two hours to prevent bedsores.
Just after 3 a.m. on Feb. 7, Salgado sat at the central nurse’s station with another caregiver named Sandra Linares, looking over the charts as patients slept in the surrounding rooms before the next ronda at 4 a.m.
Salgado recalled Linares getting up to go to the kitchen at the other end of the facility at around 3:30 a.m.
“Then she started yelling, gritando,” Salgado recalled.
“Laurita! Laurita! Venga!” Linares called out.
Initially, Salgado thought it was a medical emergency with a patient in one of the rooms located near the kitchen.
“I ran to room 9 and then room 10, and there was nobody,” Salgado recalled. “I screamed, ‘What happened?’ I was nervous. I ran to the kitchen and asked her what happened. Dijo, ‘Nombre, la oficina en frente!’”
Looking out through the kitchen’s glass door, Salgado saw smoke billowing out from Comfort House’s administrative building — the old, 87-year-old wooden house that once served as the original Comfort House facility when the property was donated by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville in 1989.
Salgado said that despite a recent inspection, the alarm failed to go off.
“We listened and nothing,” she recalled.
Soon after, police and firefighters arrived on scene. Salgado said that she was advised to begin contacting other hospice agencies about transferring the patients to safety.
A fire chief informed staff the fire started in the breaker box at one of the rooms of the old building.
“The orange (wire) touched the blue. That’s what caused the fire,” Comfort House Administrator David Perez explained in broad strokes.
The force of the explosion sent flames into the adjacent rooms, including the pantry where all their food was stored. Over 700 canned goods were tossed.
“The heat cooked all the food in the pantry,” Perez said. “This is why we had to throw it all away. It was just cooked.”
The building where Sister Marian Strohmeyer — described as the Mother Teresa of the Rio Grande Valley — had once set up shop and provided a home for individuals diagnosed with AIDS now sits empty with a lingering smell of charred wood. The attic still singed and black bears the marks of the February flames.
Perez and his staff were left to count their blessings. Miraculously, wind blew flames away from the wooden deck connecting the old building to the new facility where the patients slept.
Nobody was hurt during the fire, and the result of the blaze was not a complete loss. Comfort House was forced to adapt while continuing to offer its services and gain some footing.
The small chapel now serves as a makeshift storage room, holding various food items and some cleaning supplies. The facility’s lobby was converted to function as the administrative office, packed with files and binders.
While Comfort House works to recover from the fire, they are also feeling heat from some members of the community who have taken offense to a drag show intended to raise funds for the 501(c)3 nonprofit.
“One thing I do want to make clear is that we love everybody,” Perez said. “We don’t repay hate with hate, you know. We do our best to continue with the mission of Comfort House at all times, which is to provide a home-like environment so that individuals can die with peace and dignity while surrounded by their loved ones.”
He said that since the announcement of the show, Comfort House employees have become the target for harassment and threatening phone calls despite the fact that the fundraiser, titled “Drag Me To Brunch,” is being organized and sponsored by entities not affiliated with Comfort House.
The individuals who are hosting the fundraiser, which is slated for 11 a.m. Sunday at the Radisson Hotel in McAllen, are no strangers to offering help to Comfort House in their time of need. Prior to COVID-19, they’d hosted a Bingo event and raised over $10,000 for the sanctuary of the terminally ill.
“Some of them approached me after the fire, and they’re like, ‘Let us help you out again.’ So that’s how this started,” Perez explained. “That’s when some of the backlash started coming.”
Perez tried explaining their dire need for funding and supplies in order to keep afloat.
“After the fire, our insurance has gone up,” Perez said. “We’re very low on food. We’re very low on cleaning supplies. We’re very low on detergent, and we wash at least a minimum of 15 loads a day. We’re short on everything. So this is going to help us rebuild a lot of what was lost.”
Marlene Benavides, a lead caregiver with over 10 years working at the Comfort House, teared up as she described the emotional work behind the daily duties she and her colleagues undertake.
“You see a lot of different diagnoses, family members that don’t know how to deal with losing a loved one,” Benavides explained. “You learn to be patient, to hold a hand, to be that person they need — just be there with them.”
Like her coworkers, angry callers complaining about the drag show fundraiser have contacted Benavides. Despite the harassment and threats of protest, she believes the needs of their patients and their families come first.
“Any donation, anything, it’s a blessing for us,” Benavides said. “If it’s five pennies, it’s five pennies we didn’t have before. We deal with patients that don’t have insurance, that don’t get their medications free, and all of that is expensive. Whatever help we can get, it’s a blessing because we’re helping other people that are in need.”
As Perez walked through the facility, he stopped and visited with some of the patients. One of those was Richard Lawler, who lay in his bed watching television.
“How are you doing, Mr. Lawler?” Perez asked.
“I’m hanging in there,” Lawler responded with a strained laugh.
“Lawler is a character,” Perez explained. “He’s very loving and his wife comes to visit him every day. And he has a very good appetite.”
In another room, daughters Yadira Rodriguez and Matty Alonzo visited their 79-year-old mother Herminia Tristan. As she lay in bed, her well-manicured fingernails stood out.
“She used to hate the color red, so we went ahead and changed it to this color,” Alonzo explained, holding her mother’s lavender-colored nails in one hand and gently stroking her gray hair with another.
“These are very nice people with a big heart, a very warm heart — all of them,” Rodriguez said about the Comfort House staff. “We can’t complain about nothing because they’re nothing but understanding and very professional.”
Walking out of the room, Perez stopped and reflected for a moment.
“You know, when people come against us, I feel hurt because, you know, all the fundraisers are for us to continue to provide these services,” he said. “Some of the people that are against some of the decisions made — they don’t hear this, they don’t see this, and this is what Comfort House it’s about.”
To find more information about Comfort House, their mission, or to make a donation, visit their website at www.comforthousergv.com.
To see more, view Monitor photojournalist Delcia Lopez’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: Comfort House strives to maintain hospice care in McAllen after fire
