Math teacher Rebecca Olivares sees her co-workers in the math department daily, but after a tree severely damaged her house, causing her family to move, she did not expect them to show up and help pack up her belongings.
“I was really touched by the fact that they came to help me move,” Olivares said.
She lived in Atlanta for most of her life, but alongside her husband and son, Olivares moved to Issaquah in 2023, where she found a job at UPrep for the 2023-2024 school year. On the night the tree destroyed her house, there was a historic storm called a bomb cyclone.
“My husband, son and I were just sitting in the dark in the living room downstairs because you can hear the wind, you can hear tree branches hitting the roof,” Olivares said. “We did not want to spend any time upstairs, so we felt like we were in a fairly safe part of our house.”
However, their feeling of safety quickly changed when they heard a noise above them.
“Right around 8:15, there was a very loud crash and crack, and then sort of a boom and then the house shook,” Olivares said.
A tree of six to seven inches in diameter, according to Olivares, had fallen on their son’s room.
“The windows were destroyed, all of the insulation from the attic had fallen because the ceiling had fallen in,” Olivares said. “The guest bedroom ceiling had also caved in.”
Her family had to quickly gather their things into a car and look for a hotel. When they came back the next day, Olivares learned that it would be at least 6 months before they could move back in. The family decided to look for another home and visited 23 properties over a period of five days until they finally found one.
“When I got the keys to the new place I realized we needed help moving because our insurance company was not going to pay for us to hire professional movers,” Olivares said.
To combat the moving problem, her husband asked some of his swimming friends while Olivares texted the math department. 8 people representing UPrep showed up which was much higher than Olivares was expecting.
“I haven’t been here that long. So I’ve known most of these people for like less than a year,” Olivares said. “And the fact that they were just willing to come out to Issaquah, I was just really floored.”
One of the people that showed up to help was PE teacher Nate Whitney who co-advises a group of ninth graders with Olivares. A couple of days earlier, he had invited Olivares and her family to Thanksgiving dinner at his house.
“It was really touching that he invited us for Thanksgiving,” Olivares said. “And it actually worked out great.”
Overall, she is very thankful for the support from those around her.
“That’s just the level of the community at UPrep that people feel like they need to step up and help this person thats going through a tragedy,” Olivares said. “It’s hard to put into words how great it was.”