PHOTOS COURTESY OF ACADEMY MORTGAGE
Love Builds and it takes a village When we last wrote about Becky Portlock in the June issue, she was anxiously awaiting the start of her new Love Builds home in Paradise, expecting a move-in date sometime in November. As we’ve come to learn over the past fourteen years of Upgraded Living, a lot can change in a month, and in the world of construction, things tend to take longer than you originally anticipated. It was understandably a breath of fresh air when we found the opposite to be the case in Becky’s build, thanks to the expanded efforts of Academy Mortgage and Lowe’s. “The town of Paradise is near and dear to us here at Academy,” says Loan Officer Michael Powell. Michael is a resident of Chico and has seen the impact the fire has had on Paradise and neighboring communities firsthand. “There isn’t one person who isn’t personally touched by the story of Paradise and the heroic efforts during and after the devastating fire.” Michael’s feelings were clearly echoed by Academy Mortgage as a whole, who had amassed over 100 volunteers spanning offices from Alaska to Baltimore, each paying their own way to help build Becky a new home.
“We call these trips ‘expeditions.’' Academy Mortgage EVP of People Abby Hawkins said, “All of our 242 branches do service in their local communities, but we try to do something extra special on larger service projects away from home. Becky’s story touched all of us, and the turnout has just been incredible. We consider Paradise our community backyard and plan to make as many trips as we can to help those who were victims of the Camp Fire.” Regional Sales Manager Scott Starr, continued, “We push the members of Academy Mortgage to have the courage to RISE—that is, we encourage them to show resilience, integrity, selflessness, and empathy. This project required all four and was the perfect way for our team to participate in something that gave back. We recently opened a Chico branch of Academy Mortgage in Meriam Park and are working with Fannie Mae to create opportunities for individuals to get back into homes quickly throughout Butte County. The more people we can get into homes and homeownership again, the faster we can bring wealth and prosperity back to community.” Not only did Academy Mortgage bring an
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army of volunteers to Becky’s build, but they committed financially as well, purchasing a gigantic tool trailer for the project and filling it with over $16,000 in tools, generously sold without profit by Skyway Tools in Chico. The tools purchased will be donated to the Paradise community after the project is finished, creating a sort of tool-library for community members, where they can borrow tools to complete their own projects. To take things one step further, they created a registry to ensure Becky had everything she could possibly need when she moved into her home. They presented the registry to their employees, and they have actively been working to fulfill each item. “As soon as we committed to the project, everything just started coming together.” Area Manager Dave Waldschmidt said, “It was one miracle after the other, and this buildout has provided us a good launching pad locally to take a bit more ownership of what’s going on in our backyard. We need to own what happened here and invest whatever we can to bring the area back. We’ve committed to a minimum of two trips each year for the following 2-3 years, and we’re excited to see just how far we can go from there.”
