Migrant support center reeling from funding cuts, recent fire threatens operations
To add to that challenge police are also investigating a dumpster fire that was set just feet away from their building.
At least 9 international student visas revoked at Colorado universities
Marcel Narucki, cofounder of the Village Exchange Center, said for the last eight years the group has helped thousands of underserved families in the community.
'What you see here is going to feed 900 families tomorrow,' he said.
'We serve essentially the neighborhood,' said Narucki. 'The neighborhood is largely comprised of refugees and immigrants. Right now we're serving for example our food pantry, we're feeding over 4,000 people a week.'
The nonprofit also offers wrap-around services and a community farm that grows culturally appropriate food for the different communities they serve.
'We have cultural navigators if someone is coming for food and they have the needs we're providing resources and places for them to go to serve their needs,' said Narucki.
That work has helped people like Darwin Gonzalez who has been picking up food for his family at the center for the last eight months.
Thousands of pounds of wildflower seeds air-dropped over Quarry Fire burn scar
'I don't have the words to explain how grateful I am I have been in circumstances. I rely on this place a lot,' said Gonzalez.
Lately, that mission has been made harder.
'Funding in these last few weeks has been literally cut off,' Narucki said. 'So starting with the big FEMA federal grants that stopped a couple of weeks ago. Essentially we lost over 2 million dollars for our food pantry. Most recently we lost about $650,000 for health access programs. Just today I came from a meeting with some of our staff. We're having to let two people go, cut hours for several people. Both are single mothers, they are basically the face of a lot of people we serve. When I say fear, multiply that fate by hundreds and thousands.'
In addition to those challenges, a surveillance camera from outside the center captured video from Thursday night around 8:30 p.m.
It shows a woman walking around the dumpster. She makes a motion with her hands, and moments later you see large flames coming from the dumpster.
'We can't say the intent, we don't know, but what we see in the footage is a fire intentionally started,' said Narucki. 'We're already struggling with severe limitations and our ability to be able to serve people. When it happens at this moment it just makes us feel so much more vulnerable.'
Parker mother prayed over child thrown from car hit by drunk driver
Fire crews arrived quickly and were able to put out the fire before it damaged the building. Narucki says he still has fears not knowing a motive or where the future of the nonprofit stands.
'We'll have to see,' he said. 'We're really in a vulnerable place right now and looking at not being able to help and respond to the people in need.'
An Aurora fire spokesperson told FOX31 they are investigating the fire, but there are no further details to share. Meanwhile, if you want to help the Village Exchange Center you can visit their website and click the donate tab.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
06-08-2025
As Eaton blaze burned in January, officials were just as confused as residents by erroneous California wildfire alerts, emails show
As multiple wildfires like the Eaton blaze and the Palisades fire wreaked havoc across Southern California in January, fears over neighborhoods being destroyed were compounded by confusion over which areas of Los Angeles County were actually under evacuation warnings. "An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued to nearly 10 million County residents along with some residents of neighboring counties," Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Director Kevin McGowan said in a statement on Jan. 9. Now, more than six months after those erroneous emergency alerts went out, emails and text messages show for the first time just how perplexing the messaging mayhem was, based on more than 200 pages of records released by Los Angeles County in response to a public records request from ABC News. "We didn't send anything out. Promise," one coordinator wrote a colleague in a text message on Jan. 10. "525 pm… we weren't doing any orders I don't think then," a county employee responded. "FEMA is going to need to look into this." The Kenneth fire burned just over 1,000 acres not far from Calabasas, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, yet people far beyond that area were alerted about the blaze. The Eaton and Palisades fires affected far more residents across the county, impacting more than 37,000 acres combined, according to the messages. The newly released documents capture days' worth of questions asked by emergency management representatives as they sought clarity about the situation. Among the documents, some county officials even texted pictures of the mistaken notifications among themselves to try to figure out what was going on. Three days into the wildfire emergency, the Los Angeles County OEM, apparently out of frustration, even sent an email to a generic mailbox for the Federal Communications Commission as they struggled to solve the problem, according to the documents. The email to the FCC noted that there was believed to be an "unknown system error" with the county's Integrated Public Alert & Warning System, or IPAWS, causing an alert message to be sent outside of the zone of people who should have received it the previous day. "Since then, the county has been experiencing unsolicited countywide IPAWS Alerts throughout the night" the email said. "At this time, we contacted FEMA's IPAWS, and our vender [sic] to see if they can correct the problem. Currently we have no active alerts, this is in an effort to control this error, so far all efforts have been unsuccessful. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated." U.S. Representative Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) later launched an investigation into the erroneous alerts, with a resulting report noting in part that "the initial false alert is believed to be caused by technology issues with third-party technology vendor Genasys." The FCC, which sets the technical standards for emergency alerts, did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr sent a letter to Garcia in April stating that while emergency alerts can save lives, "erroneous or improperly targeted alerts can have unintended and dire consequences." The communications obtained by ABC News show that concerns in Los Angeles County over the effectiveness of the wireless emergency alert system started within hours of the Palisades fire breaking out on Jan. 7, two days before the message that was erroneously sent to millions of people. "This is getting kind of frustrating," county OEM representative Bennett Cummings emailed Genasys customer success manager Lisa Bernard on Jan. 7. "Map shows we're targeting two zones. PBS Warn just shows one launch." "Are citizens reporting they're not getting them?" Bernard asked Cummings in another exchange. "I'm seeing them come through the feed on PBS warn and the IPAWS monitoring channel and the active alerts feed is showing the corresponding area. I'm working with support right now to see if we can figure out what's going on." "Issue is we're needing to do one campaign per zone, but we're selecting multiple zones and its only launching to one of the selected not all the zones selected," Cummings responded. "We've caught up now on pbs warn but had to do multiple campaigns." The next day, on Jan. 8, another Genasys representative emailed Los Angeles County officials, writing in part that they "identified an underlying issue requiring further investigation to resolve." Contacted by ABC News following the release of the communications, a Genasys spokesperson said, "During the Los Angeles wildfires, Genasys Protect enabled LA County to reduce evacuation alert times from 40-60 minutes to just 6 minutes, likely saving hundreds of lives."
CBS News
05-08-2025
- CBS News
"Special" K-9 and handler were among the Colorado first responders who helped out in Texas after flooding
At first glance, Pickles looks like any other working dog -- eager to get to work and ready to move. But a closer look reveals something different. "He's a bit of a special dog," said Michael Zukowski, Pickles' handler and longtime member of Colorado Task Force One. "He's got kind of a malformed face." Pickles, a 3-year-old black Labrador, was born with a cleft palate and some facial paralysis. Still, none of that affects what he was born to do: work. "With his nose, I jokingly say it's a cheat code sometimes because when he gets an odor and he starts taking those big deep breaths, he actually snorts," said Zukowski. "I can hear it from quite a distance so I can tell when he gets an odor." Pickles is a human remains detection dog, one of just three certified by FEMA in Colorado and one of only 90 in the U.S. His keen nose and unrelenting drive make him a critical part of the task force. "I jokingly say it's a cheat code sometimes," Zukowski said. "When he gets an odor and starts taking those big deep breaths, he actually snorts, and I can hear it from quite a distance. So, I can tell when he's got something." Pickles and Zukowski recently returned from a two-week deployment in Texas following deadly flooding in Kerr County. Along ravaged riverbanks and through large debris fields, the pair searched for the missing – including at Camp Mystic, where several young girls and counselors lost their lives. "There were several days when I had to dial it back and put him in a kennel in an air-conditioned vehicle for about two hours to cool his body temperature down," Zukowski said. "And he still wanted to work." Zukowski, who's responded to disasters around the world during his 15-year career with Colorado Task Force One, said the flooding in Texas was some of the worst he's ever seen. "It's probably one of the more destructive ones I've seen for water damage," he said. "Second to the typhoon in the Philippines." Now back home, Pickles is getting some well-deserved rest and playtime with Zukowski. It's a chance to just be a dog, even if he doesn't quite look like the rest. "You're a happy dog," Zukowski said to Pickles. Still, that downtime won't last long. Pickles has at least 30 hours of training scheduled each month to stay sharp for the next mission – whenever and wherever that call may come.
Fox News
02-08-2025
- Fox News
Mountain cleanup yields 780 pounds of lost items and strange finds in popular resort town
A recent annual cleanup at a Colorado ski resort turned into something of a treasure hunt – as staff uncovered everything from outdated technology to a hamburger flipper. Earlier this summer, Breckenridge Ski Resort in Breckenridge, Colorado, announced that its staffers had teamed up to remove a whopping 780 pounds of trash. Much of the garbage came from patrons who accidentally dropped things off the ski lift. The resort said the effort required 150 employees — and yielded some unusual finds. The oddest find was a message in a bottle, prompting some speculation about what it might contain. A spokesperson for Breckenridge Ski Resort told KDVR that it wasn't a romantic love letter from decades past, however. It was actually just an old COVID-19 vaccination card. Staff members also spotted a cracked iPhone and an iPod Nano, along with a $2 Canadian coin. Other strange finds? Plenty of vape cartridges, along with an inexplicable hamburger flipper. As expected, the cleanup also turned up lots of empty bottles and general trash. The resort's senior communications manager Max Winter told Fox News Digital in late July that – surprisingly – the staff's favorite find didn't make the video of the efforts. "[It was] actually, believe it or not, a family of moose!" Winter said. "A couple of our employees stumbled across the family while searching for lost and discarded items." "While our team kept their distance and didn't take any photos, their encounter serves as a great reminder that our natural spaces are a shared home, and it is up to each of us to do our part to take care of them," he added. Though many of the items were trash, Winter noted that most of the 780-pound weight was made up of larger items that were recycled or upcycled. "In some very rare cases, we've even been able to reunite items with their previous owners," he recalled. "For example, a few years ago at our sister resort, Keystone, our teams were able to match an engraved engagement ring with a guest months after [the person's] visit." The spokesperson added that the effort, called Mountain Clean Up Day, is one of the staff's favorite annual events. "It gives us a chance to give some love back to the mountains we call home," Winter said. "In addition to being the right thing to do for our mountain, it's also a fun paid event to connect with our teammates, see what wacky items may have been lost in the season's powder days, and, of course, enjoy a free lunch on the mountain."
