Remembering Robert Yu

When you volunteer with Habitat for Humanity one time, you see the impact your time is making. Volunteer twice, and you start to feel some real connections with your fellow volunteers. Volunteer three times, and you're family!  People who volunteer with Habitat on a regular basis become part of a community called our Regular Volunteers or simply, our Regulars.

It's easy to spot a Regular on a Habitat construction site. They often know just where to find the chalk line you're looking for. Helping lead crews or doing a particularly tricky task. Wearing a broad smile of welcome.

One of those smiles was Robert Yu's. 

If you've volunteered with Habitat in Walnut Creek or Oakland, chances are you have had the pleasure of working alongside Robert. His patience, kindness, creativity, and sense of humor made the hardest work seem fun. Robert brought those qualities to site in the hundreds of hours he dedicated to our mission. And among his many contributions, the 23 new homes at Esperanza Place are welcoming their new homeowners, due in no small part to Robert.

Robert touched those and many other lives – including the volunteers who served alongside him for years. Volunteers like Laura Goderez, who'd like to share this message in memory of Robert:

"I have to tell you about my friend Robert. We had very different styles (I'm more of a Julia Child "no one will ever know" builder, and Robert was a "measure three times, cut once....VERY slowly...and then go back and trim off the little bits" kinda guy.  Drove me NUTS!), but we worked well together and became great friends. I looked forward to seeing him every Saturday as he walked on site pulling a wheeled cart full of his tools for another day of building houses together (followed by Happy Hour at a local bar at the end of the day!). Then one Saturday he failed to show up and didn't answer his phone. On June 14 of this year, as Robert was driving home on the freeway from his painting class, his car was rear-ended by a speeding drunk driver, and he was killed instantly.  

Robert worked on Esperanza Place from its inception, and before it's complete, I am helping to raise $10,000 as a donation to Habitat to help build the remaining homes. The money will be raised by Habitat staff and volunteers and their friends and families, and by Robert's family. A memorial plaque will then be placed on the site, so that the families know, "He helped build these houses, which you have made your homes."

Losing Robert has created a HUGE hole in my cosmos. I grieve for him every day, especially when I'm driving on the freeway or when I'm building at the site he should still be on, but isn't.  Getting that plaque up will be cathartic for me.... fulfilling a wish for his family and making sure he is remembered by the people whose lives he helped change. So, I invite you to visit the fundraising page for Robert. I ask that you be as generous as you can. For Robert. For his family. For the Habitat homeowners.

Thank you, thank you, thank you."