Bend school welcomes hurricane-hit family

Hurricane Odile tore through the Mexican resort town of Cabo San Lucas over two weeks ago, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

The Castillos have called Cabo home for 10 years, and they have never been through a hurricane like that one. About 4,000 locals and 26,000 foreign tourists have been affect.

Waking up the morning after it hit, Castillo recalled: “It was like Armageddon.”

There was only minor damage to their home, but her children’s home was nearly half destroyed.

A few days later, the family was able to get a flight to Dallas to connect to Bend. Currently, they’re staying with family.

Castillo’s best friend’s daughter just started at Seven Peaks School and was able to make the connection for them.

“It was a nice transition, because it’s similar to their school in Cabo in terms of size,” she said Wednesday. “It’s one grade per class. So I just felt it would be a family environment, very comforting. And I can’t say enough how much they welcomed us here.’

Seven Peaks Admissions Director Anna Winter said the Castillos have been able to jump right in. And when school staff think of how much they family has been through, they’re just happy to welcome them into the school.

Winter also said it gives students a chance to practice their Spanish, since the school runs as an International Baccalaureate program.

“It helps on several levels,” she said. “It helps with empathy, explaining empathy to the kids. Trying to make them understand that a natural disaster could happen anywhere. And if it happened to them, that they would want to be embraced by some other community.”

Castillo stressed how strongly she feels tied to her community back home. As much as the family is grateful to be alive and well, Cabo is still home, and Angie’s husband stayed behind to help the many families without a home or short on food.

“It wasn’t really an option for him to leave,” she said. “It’s a community that’s been so good to us in the 10 years that we’ve lived there, and we just feel such a connection to the people and the community and the culture.”

On Sunday, the Castillos reached out to immediate friends and family for donations for families in need. Within 24 hours, they received around $20,000. With that amount, they are able to feed up to 800 families in Cabo.

Castillo said if anyone’s interested in donating, the Boulder City Sunrise Rotary Club is donating 100 percent of the proceeds through a link on their site http://bcsr.org/donate.php.