{"id":131000,"date":"2026-03-06T05:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/131000\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T05:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T05:37:07","slug":"community-steps-up-to-help-grist-house-employee-who-lost-everything-in-millvale-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/131000\/","title":{"rendered":"Community steps up to help Grist House employee who lost everything in Millvale fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the Grist House Beer Crib on Pittsburgh Road in Butler, Thursday nights usually have a more subdued crowd, but not on this particular Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This time around, the bar was packed with people to support a Grist House employee who lost his home in a fire last week in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/3-people-rescued-from-late-night-millvale-apartment-fire\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" data-absolute=\"true\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Millvale<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We get bumping on the weekends and everything, but this is different for a Thursday, for sure,&#8221; said Stephen Yonushonis, a bartender who lost everything in the fire Feb. 24 at the Millvilla Apartment Building.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bar patrons had food, drinks and made individual donations into buckets labeled &#8220;Help Stephen Rebuild,&#8221; all to support Yonushonis in his efforts to get back on his feet.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve been donating extensively,&#8221; Yonushonis said. &#8220;It&#8217;s been a great thing to see everybody come together the way they have. It&#8217;s a very humbling experience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yonushonis said it means even more to him to see his community come together and enjoy themselves while supporting him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I love it, and they&#8217;re all bonding with each other over it, too,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not just about me. It&#8217;s a community for everyone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His neighbors and co-workers describe him as kind, quiet and humble, and they didn&#8217;t hesitate to support him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s wonderful,&#8221; said Laura Plummer. &#8220;He&#8217;s been here since Grist House took the place here, and he&#8217;s just wonderful. He&#8217;s a really good time, and I think it&#8217;s really nice that everybody comes down here to support.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the midst of adversity, he&#8217;s also kept a positive outlook and looks at his losses as &#8220;just stuff.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was lucky to not have been in the building when it happened,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And the fact that the people that were in there were able to get out as safely as they did, this could&#8217;ve been a million times worse than it was.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yonushonis also praised the response of his neighbors in Millvale and their support.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just seeing them looking out for everybody else, it&#8217;s just a great thing to witness,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We look out for each other down there, so I love them. I love everybody down there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In a region where being a good neighbor is the tagline of one of its most famous natives \u2014 Fred Rogers \u2014 neighbors came out to Butler County on Thursday to share a night out with one of their own.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s very appreciative, overwhelmed at how much the community came out to support him,&#8221; Plummer said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know it&#8217;s weird to make it about me, but I don&#8217;t know how to put it into words,&#8221; Yonushonis said. &#8220;It means the world to me, even if I wasn&#8217;t involved in that fire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the Grist House Beer Crib on Pittsburgh Road in Butler, Thursday nights usually have a more subdued&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[894,4112,422,73,75,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-131000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh","8":"tag-allegheny-county","9":"tag-butler-county","10":"tag-fire","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-headlines","13":"tag-pittsburgh-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}