After most volunteers backed out, a Corpus Christi business owner and his sister stayed behind for days to finish the job themselves.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 What began as a routine cleanup quickly turned into a mission to help a local veteran in need.<\/p>\n
Alberto Esquivel, owner of Big Al’s Cleaning Service, said he and his team arrived at the Northwest Terrace Apartments in the Annaville neighborhood of Corpus Christi Friday expecting a difficult job. Instead, they encountered conditions unlike anything they had seen before.<\/p>\n
“We walked in there, and you know, there’s (dog) feces everywhere,” Esquivel said. “There’s dog piss everywhere. There was four inches above the ground of just compressed pee pads, and sweaters and blankets … It’s been there for months. I had to use a broomstick to scrape it out.”<\/p>\n
The apartment belonged to a local Army veteran known to neighbors as “Sarge.”<\/p>\n
According to Esquivel, the veteran was facing eviction and needed help. Without hesitation, he volunteered his company to take on the cleanup effort.<\/p>\n
“I volunteered our company without even asking any of my employees or anything,” Esquivel said. “I actually got, with myself included, eight of us to come out.”<\/p>\n
But after seeing the conditions inside and realizing they lacked the protective equipment needed for the job, most of the crew stepped away.<\/p>\n
Only Esquivel and his sister, Terry Reyes, remained.<\/p>\n
Over the next four days, the pair worked to clear the apartment of trash, biohazards and insects while also reaching out to the community for assistance.<\/p>\n
For Esquivel, helping the veteran was about giving back to someone who had once served others.<\/p>\n
“Who knows what she did while she served, but she did it for the community, so why would the community not want to do it for her?” he said.<\/p>\n
A friend told 3NEWS the veteran earned the nickname “Sarge” due to her service as a staff sergeant in Operation Desert Storm.<\/p>\n
Today, however, those close to her say she is facing a different battle.<\/p>\n
Lynn Martin, a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and psychiatric nurse practitioner with experience treating veterans and people coping with trauma, anxiety, depression and substance use challenges, said the effects of trauma can look different from person to person.<\/p>\n
“Our reactions to trauma are very individualized,” Martin said.<\/p>\n
Martin said struggles involving trauma, depression or substance use can sometimes make everyday responsibilities feel overwhelming and interfere with a person’s ability to care for themselves.<\/p>\n
For Esquivel and Reyes, the focus was never on judging how the veteran arrived at this point.<\/p>\n
Instead, they wanted to make sure she didn’t have to face it alone.<\/p>\n
“I teach my kids, sometimes there’s people that need help, and don’t be afraid to help,” Reyes said. “That’s what I can tell everybody. Don’t be afraid to help somebody.”<\/p>\n
3NEWS reached out to Northwest Terrace Apartments to ask whether eviction proceedings are still moving forward. As of publication, no response had been received.<\/p>\n
Friends and neighbors told 3NEWS the veteran remains in her apartment.<\/p>\n
Veterans experiencing a mental health crisis can call or text 988 and press 1 to reach the Veterans Crisis Line 24 hours a day, seven days a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After most volunteers backed out, a Corpus Christi business owner and his sister stayed behind for days to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-313473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}