COMSTOCK PARK, Mich. — When you pull up to Kellee Vanderveen's home, the first thing you'll notice is how festive she is. Kellee loves fall and she's adorned her yard with pumpkins, hay bales and homemade tombstone decorations. But beyond her spooky setup, something inside Kellee's home was truly scary, and even life-threatening, to her family.
"I work from home and I work downstairs. I'm right outside of the furnace room, and I started just having extreme headaches all the time, and just somewhat feeling nauseous and dizzy, which prompted us look into it a little further. We found that the both of them were potentially putting out carbon monoxide," she said.
Kellee didn't have the money to fix the furnace.
"I'm divorced, and I've been going through some financial hardship, and it's definitely changed everything about my life," she said.
Kellee and her two kids went without heat in their home for more than a year. She said the winter was especially hard.
"Last year we used a space heater, like a couple space heaters, and we're just honestly hoping that the house didn't burn down," she said.
But then, Kellee's father heard about a West Michigan company willing to lend a hand.
"My dad had seen it on the news, and he just kind of casually mentioned it to me. He just said, 'Oh by the way, if they call you, I entered you into a nomination for a new furnace replacement,'" she said.
The campaign is called "Feel The Love." Lennox Industries started the program and Schaafsma Heating & Cooling has been one of the participating installers.
"They donate equipment and then we donate our labor and time to install that equipment for a deserving family," said Schaafsma service manager David Buren, who believed Kelle's family was deserving.
"A single mother that’s strong that’s just trying to be there for her family – a young baby and a teenage daughter. [She] didn’t want to give up on them and their home and the roots they’ve planted in Comstock Park."
After some time, David gave Kellee a call.
"He just said that he would like to come over, and that he wanted to explain to me what they were potentially going to do. And I honestly just thought that maybe they could potentially work out a deal with maybe DTE, or maybe with some type of furnace company," she said.
"And he just shared the news with me that I was chosen for replacement, and I broke down crying, to be honest. It was so overwhelming. It was just pure gratitude, relief, just I felt like humanity was restored, to be honest. It's one of those surreal moments. Good things don't happen to me very often, so to have something like that happen. It was really emotional."
Kellee's family wasn't the only one that Schaafsma helped.
"We had nine families that we went to their homes, listened to their stories, some tough circumstances from a lot of families. We came to the conclusion that one family wasn't going to be enough - there were a lot of deserving families. We, we were actually able to bless three families with some new equipment," David said, noting that the other families were in Grand Rapids and Fremont.
"Kellee and her family got the furnace, AC, water heater, the whole thing. For two other families, we were able to do furnaces. Another family we did a furnace and two water heaters for. Behler-Young in Comstock Park and Shoemakers in Grand Rapids were nice enough to donate some water heaters for us. And then for the other families we didn't choose as far as replacing equipment, we were able to get our service technicians to their homes and take a look at their heating equipment, make sure that they had heat this winter. We didn't want anybody to go without comfort in their homes this winter."
Kellee is grateful that the other families were able to be taken care of too, and she's grateful for the nomination her father gave her.
"He is honestly the most selfless human being I ever met my entire life, and I love him desperately. I am so grateful and thankful that he went above and beyond to do something like that for me. I appreciate him so much for doing that," she said.
Schaafsma plans to do "Feel The Love" again next year, so if you have someone you want to nominate, you can follow the company's Facebook page and look for an announcement next summer.
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