Dec. 06--With a devastating fire forcing Nuevo Leon Restaurant owners to rebuild, the Pilsen community is coming together, offering financial support and jobs to the restaurant's employees.
The restaurant at 1515 W. 18th St. was destroyed in an extra-alarm fire early Wednesday.
Alexis Esparza, executive director of the Eighteenth Street Development Corporation, who saw a conversation on reddit.com discussing ways to help the restaurant employees, created a GoFundMe account Wednesday for the restaurant's employees.
"Regardless of what happens next, there were people who were scheduled to go to work and they're not making that money that they thought they would," Esparza said. "Even for the sake of this week alone, they're already coming short. You never know personal circumstance and the lifestyle they have. You don't know if this is going to prohibit them from putting food on the table or paying their bills. You can't tell the bills that the restaurant you work at caught fire and ask them to hold off."
Adrian Santiago, 40, from Gage Park, was one of the redditors who suggested the idea on a post about the fire at Nuevo Leon.
"I thought it would be a pretty cool idea if there was a GoFundMe campaign or some kind of help so I started asking questions online and then someone else suggested they would chip in right away," Santiago said.
Esparza said the money raised by the GoFundMe account will be equally divided among employees and there will be two distributions, the first on Christmas Eve. As of late Saturday afternoon, the account had raised about $6,500 toward its $50,000 goal.
"We ought to help the people who didn't think that this was going to happen and of course it's important because Pilsen is a community that has been under fire for gentrification reasons," Esparza said. "Well, this is a good time to show one of the anchors of the community that we care for it and want it to come back and that we care for those who work there."
The call for donations isn't the only way people are trying to help. Bridgeport restaurant Fabulous Freddies Italian Eatery invited Nuevo Leon employees to work as dishwashers and line cooks. Christie Bertucci, the owner, said her restaurant also been devastated by fire several years ago and wanted to help.
"Basically everybody's income is wiped out in one day," she said. "It's devastating. I really can't imagine what they're going through."
Bertucci said she wishes her restaurant's employees had similar help from their community when it was destroyed by a fire.
"Pilsen has such a strong community," Bertucci said. "When we had a fire, nothing happened at all. We were on our own, nobody reached out, there wasn't a story and it took a while to open back up. Luckily our employees came back and opened it up and we have an even stronger customer base than before, but it was really bad for all those months and I wasn't sure if we would be able to come back."
Because the restaurant is family owned, Bertucci said the tragedy is very personal and hits close to home for her.
