‘Our community pulls together.’ Turlock volunteers help family hit by fire, racist slur
There was no sleep for Terresa Rolland and her family in the hours that followed the burning of the fence behind their home in the wee hours of Friday morning. The destruction left the yard of their single-story Kenwood Avenue apartment open to the alleyway behind it, and to the racial slur the family saw painted on the fence on the opposite side.
In the 9 a.m. hour Friday, about seven hours after the fire, Rolland, who is Black, shared her photos and fears on the Turlock Neighborhood Watch page on Facebook. The post drew more than 400 comments, many of them sharing their sympathy and offering prayers.
Some offered more, like fundraising and donations of material and labor, and then made good on the offers. Among them was Tim Fried, who’s lived in Turlock about four and a half years and said, “I really love this little community” and was disturbed to learn what had happened. He’s worked on cars and motorcycles all his life, he said, but when the pandemic hit, he took on work including fencing, flooring, cabinet work and remodeling.
He and others commented on Rolland’s post that they would get the job done.
Late Friday morning, a group of six to eight people, by Fried’s estimate, tore up and removed the burned fencing and prepped the area for its replacement.
The volunteers didn’t want the Rolland family and its neighbors to go another night feeling vulnerable, Fried said. One of them, longtime Turlock resident Donald Babadalir, added that Rolland was worried because with the fence destroyed, absolutely anyone could walk through the property from the alley to Kenwood Avenue.
‘We gotta get this done for them’
A temporary barrier of chicken wire was hung Friday. And on Saturday, working into the night, a group of guys erected about 30 feet of a solid, 7-foot-tall wood fence. Other volunteers brought food and drink to the residents.
A doorbell/floodlight/camera combo was donated, and money from a gofundme account set up for the Rollands purchased another. Those were installed on the front and rear of the building that houses the Rollands’ apartment and a few others.
Strangers became friends during the work, said Evin Nisan. “We kind of all pushed each other. ... Some of us would take a break here and there and get chatty for a couple of minutes and then somebody else would be like, ‘Hey, c’mon, back to work. We gotta get this done for them.’”
Sunday morning, Fried, Babadalir, Nisan and Mark Seachrist again visited the property to add an 8-foot section of fence that closes the side and back yards from the front walkway along the apartments’ doors.
Babadalir said the photos he saw on Rolland’s post — the burned fence and the N-word painted on its counterpart across the alley — was “completely egregious” and needed to be immediately answered. “Some people complain that negative things happen in the city and they feel like maybe that reflects the entirety of the city. I don’t believe that to be the case. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years now and I’ve always seen that our community pulls together and fixes things.”
Graffiti a possible hate crime, chief says
Rolland’s fence is on the Stanislaus County side of the alley behind Kenwood Avenue, but the other side of the alley, where the slur was painted, is in the city.
The graffiti reportedly showed up on the fence within the past week, Turlock police Sgt. Mike Parmley told The Bee on Friday, but officers are still investigating if the fire and graffiti are related. Police Chief Nino Amirfar commented on Facebook that his department is investigating the graffiti as a potential hate crime.
“I’m so grateful to all of these guys,” Rolland, mother to three sons ages 11, 12 and 14, said Sunday morning. As she spoke, one of her boys tossed a football with Fried’s son.
She said her boys are handling the situation well, but she’s slept uneasily since the fire, knowing the criminal or criminals might strike again. But she hopes the cameras would make them think twice. “I can’t wait to use them. It’s definitely a peace of mind knowing these cameras are up.”
Rolland said she loves Turlock, has never before experienced racism there, and is touched by the love the community “has shown right back” to her. That these strangers would do this work for her family, that their wives would bring meals, “It was so overwhelming,” she said. “It was just amazing that people who don’t even know us embraced us.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2020 at 7:28 PM.
