CEDAR SPRINGS, Mich. —
Nonno’s Italian Restaurant in Cedar Springs is raising money for a family of regulars who lost their home in a July fire. The dine and donate on Aug. 13 will give 15% of all restaurant proceeds to the Randalls, who are trying to rebuild their home on the same lot.
“We've been in contact with some builders working on trying to get the demo taken care of here soon,” Traci Randall said. “We can start the healing process and start seeing a new building there, instead of the devastation it's hard to drive by every day on the way to work and see it. So, the sooner we can get the demo done the better.”
The Randalls were out to eat in a neighboring town, when Traci’s husband, Jason, got the call that their house was on fire.
“We didn't believe him at first. We were like, ‘no, you have to have the wrong house. It can't be our house. There's no way,’” Traci said. “I started checking on our son to see if he was answering his phone, but he wasn't.”
Their oldest son was at home with a cold playing video games in the basement. Fortunately, the Randall family taught their sons how to escape from an egress window.
“Then I started calling the neighbors and asked them if it was really happening, and they said, ‘Yeah, it really is happening. Get home,’” Traci said.
The Randalls got home to find their house destroyed by the fire that started in their garage.
Since the Randalls are regulars at Nonno’s, owner Roberto Lafranca wanted to organize the dine and donate to help them get back on their feet.
“The Randall family are really good customers of ours, and we do a lot for the community,” Lafranca said. “So just people need a helping hand, and we're here to give them a hand.”
Since July, the Randalls have been thankful for the community support.
“It was really nice to just see the community out for I mean, as soon as the fire happened, we had people calling us, texting us, ‘how can we help you? How can we support you guys? Is there anything you guys need?’” Traci said.
The family is talking with builders on the timeline to start construction. But for now, they’re trying to figure out all they lost.
“There's a lot of stuff to get. You don't realize how much stuff you own until something like this happens and you have to start categorizing everything you have in your house,” Traci said. “Just to get back on our feet and replace some of those things that we can replace will be helpful.”
The dine and donate will be at Nonno’s in Cedar Springs on Aug. 13 – a Tuesday, which is the Randall’s favorite day to dine there.