Valentina Pereira was the last to know.
She had been staying in a nearby hotel as Lee Builders Care and Lennar Homes and partners were repairing the roof and replacing the garage door of her Fort Myers home.
Or so she thought.
As she drove toward her home in the Villas on Friday, she wondered why on Earth so many cars were parked on her street.
Somebody must be having a big Christmas party, her daughter, Victoria Krupp, told her.
Pereira would soon find more than 60 people gathered in front of her house for a "reveal" of the "Home for the Holidays" project that Builders Care and their partners had done in less than three weeks.
Even the neighborhood cats she routinely fed knew something was very different before Pereira did. They had discovered the new cathouse in the back of the home the night before, said Ray Kershaw, Lennar's director of construction, who along with crews from many Lee County building partners had been working night and day on the house.
What they couldn't know, being cats, is that her home had been taken down to the studs and everything replaced, floor to ceiling.
"This was really a gut job, brought down to the studs," said Builders Care Executive Director Leigh Cloud. "Just about everything in here, from electrical to plumbing to flooring to fixtures to cabinets, has all been replaced. It's brand new. It's basically a brand new home."
"Oh, my gosh, this is a dream. I'm dreaming. I don't think this is all real," said Pereira, the mother of five and grandmother of eight, as she toured her home. Nothing escaped her notice. "What a beautiful shower!" and "My goodness, they got a new toilet too!" she remarked on finding all the new features, which included a refrigerator, stove and microwave plus pots and pans, dishes and cups.
Some things were not new but no less treasured. Her regal European dining room table and chairs looked right at home in their new surroundings, as did her blue ceramic sink with a bird design installed in the master bathroom.
New furniture had been placed throughout the home courtesy of Clive Daniel Home.
Pereira was clearly moved. "I don't mean to cry, but it's good tears," she said.
It hadn't always been so.
A native of Portugal, Pereira had come to the United States in an arranged marriage when she was 18 years old. It had not been a happy coupling. And through the years, there had been losses — of her youngest son and a sister — and then the devastating effects of Hurricane Ian and a tornado that had ripped through a portion of her home, leaving her unable, on a seamstress's earnings, to restore the 1980s home.
There was black mold everywhere, builders discovered, and the plumbing was so bad that when she used the bathroom sink, water was pouring into the walls. She was cooking on a camp stove with propane in the kitchen.
"I went to bed last night wondering how am I going to fix all this," she said, as Kershaw handed her a new set of keys. "I feel like Cinderella."
It had been clear from the start that Pereira was the one to receive this year's Builders Care benevolence, Kershaw said. It's an annual project that's been going on for two decades.
"Builders Care had not even interviewed Valentina. We just read a letter, and they shared the letter with me, and I said, let's go. ... We came here, and this was the project. This is the one we had to do," he said. "I don't know what got into me. I don't know how to explain it. Something about this was special in my heart."
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