By Crystal Garcia
WEST TERRE HAUTE — For Barbara Sollars and Nancy Alkire, it only took one person to prove there are still good people in the world — Matt Dillon.
Alkire called Dillon at Quality Fence and explained that Sollars’ autistic son Zach wasn’t allowed outside very much because he didn’t have a fenced-in yard. And that’s all it took. Dillon, productions manager for the fence company at 1100 College Ave., responded with the materials and labor to provide Zach with an outdoor play area.
“When I made the call, I thought they could donate some fence and then we could get a work crew together,” Alkire said, “but Mr. Dillon just took it and said he would be more than happy to work with them and get this done for Zach.”
Alkire is the educational assistant in Zach’s special needs class at West Vigo Elementary School. The class had initially been brainstorming fundraising ideas for the Sollars to get the fence when Alkire just decided to call around.
“We work hard every day in our classroom to make sure the population we work with have a better life, and this is just part of it,” Alkire said. “And they’re such a nice family, we just wanted to help, so that’s what we did.”
The Sollars’ 1.3-acre property sits on Pottsville Road. They have lived there for 34 years. The house, across the way from the Wabash River and next door to a junk yard, has been Zach’s world since he was born five years ago.
Recently, Zach began to venture out of the family yard and near the junk yard, which prompted his mother to keep him in the house more. With his father in a wheelchair, she’s the only one who can keep up with him outside.
“He knows no danger …,” his mother said about Zach’s attempted excursions to see what’s beyond his yard.
Saturday, Dillon was on the property with a crew to build an area to contain Zach — about 270 feet of five-foot-high galvanized chain-linked fencing. A job such as this one would cost somewhere between $3,000 and $3,500, he said.
“I’m a Christian and I feel like it’s biblical to help people in need,” Dillon said. “I just feel like these people had a real need … [there’s] no more worthy a cause than helping a child in need.”
Having been blessed with a lot of work for the business in the past few years and with healthy children of his own, Dillon felt a need to pay it forward, he said, noting they didn’t offer to help for the recognition.
“These are good people,” he said about the Sollars family.
Barbara Sollars and the rest of the family watched as Dillon and his crew worked and Zach ran in and out of the poles saying “hi” to everyone.
It had only been about three weeks since Alkire called Sollars to tell her about the fence.
“It’s really heartwarming,” Sollars said. “I just couldn’t believe the help we could get for this soon, and he really needed it so bad.”
Sollars has two other children, both in their 30s, and seven grandchildren, but having an autistic child was a new experience. Zach was born with hydrocephalus, or water on his brain with leakage in the third ventricle.
“With autism kids, you just got to take it one day at a time,” she said, “and have a lot of support for then. You have to really be patient.”
Still, Zach fits in at his classroom and follows his program exactly, Alkire said.
“He’s a little sweetheart,” she said. “He’s a little spitfire, but he’s so endearing and loving. He is really very intelligent and he keeps us laughing all day long.”
Crystal Garcia can be reached at (812) 231-4271 or crystal.garcia@tribstar.com.
