Copper Theft Delays Dream Home

BROOKSVILLE Christine Rideout has been patient.

After three years on a waiting list, she was approved for a Habitat for Humanity house. She and her 18-year-old daughter Alexandra have put in hours of their own time hammering on other Habitat houses and framing their own.

So long as everything kept on schedule, Rideout, 45, expected to be sleeping in her new home on Boca Raton Avenue by the time Alexandra started community college courses in the fall.

But someone's greed has delayed the dream.

On Wednesday morning, construction supervisor Alex Quintard discovered that a majority of the wires in the house under construction had been ripped out and stolen.

It will take another two weeks to get back on schedule and cost the charity, which relies heavily on donations and volunteer labor, an estimated $1,000 to correct.

When told the news, "I just felt my heart go down," Rideout said Wednesday.

Quintard gave a brief tour of the damage on Thursday, pointing out the gouges in the walls like shallow scars where the wiring had been.

The main breaker box took the brunt of the damage.

"It looks like they just grabbed everything," Quintard said.

The sheriff's office is investigating.

Rideout, a self-employed single mother, permanently migrated to Spring Hill from New York four years ago. She had planned to buy a house, but the same houses that sold for $67,000 were now up to $130,000 or more.

"I just couldn't see myself getting into that kind of debt, nor qualifying for that large a mortgage," she said.

She picked up a brochure about Habitat during a visit to a government housing office and decided to think outside the box.

Her application was approved, but Rideout's house was the last of six scheduled for construction. Per policy, Rideout and her daughter put in 300 hours of "sweat equity" erecting other houses and putting work into their own three-bedroom, two-bath house.

At one point, Rideout was working at a limestone quarry and it took a strong resolve to finish an eight-hour shift hauling rock by spending a few more hours doing construction.

After watching five others move into their home, Rideout is more than ready to hang some curtains. She'll just have to wait a little bit longer.

"Whoever did this didn't realize that this is strictly volunteers," she said. "The homeowners are building the house. That's a lot of work."