Members of a Chicago Heights family who lost their home in a January fire say the community has rallied behind them.
Kirby Van Vliet woke to a faint smell of smoke in the air just before 8 a.m. Jan. 9. At first, he thought it might be a problem with the electrical system.
“I looked down the stairs, I see an orange glow out of my vision. And at that point I can feel the heat. I’m like, OK, there’s not something on fire, the house is on fire,” Kirby recalled.
With his family already out of the house headed to work and school, he was alone and still recovering from a heart transplant. Unable to reach the front door due to the flames, Kirby barricaded himself in his son’s room and called 911. Because his body had not fully acclimated to the new heart, he wasn’t able to climb out of the window on his own, and was rescued by firefighters.
But the blaze destroyed their home, he said, and claimed the lives of their two dogs, Dozer and Zeus.
After the fire, Kirby, his wife, Danielle Van Vliet, and their two 13-year-old children, Darby and Chance, lived in a hotel and an Airbnb before finally settling into a rental home in Homewood.
They are thankful they survived and relieved Danielle, a general education social worker for Homewood-Flossmoor High School District 233, was at work and their children were at school when the fire broke out. But Kirby and Danielle said the past year has been incredibly challenging.
Kirby’s heart issues began about seven years ago, following a severe case of bronchitis complicated by a virus that further damaged his heart. The virus left him with a dangerously low ejection fraction, meaning his heart struggled to pump blood at a normal rate, he said.
For years, Kirby lived with medically controlled congestive heart failure, but by early 2024, his condition worsened and he was having a difficult time breathing. After a trip to the emergency room in February, doctors told him he would need a heart transplant.
In April, he received a new heart.
But the hardships didn’t stop. In October, Danielle was mauled by one of their dogs and needed two surgeries to repair her hand, she said.
Then Kirby’s mother died just four days after the fire destroyed their home.
Still, the couple remains grateful for the outpouring of support from their community, including their workplaces, local businesses and even strangers who created their GoFundMe page and offered donations of clothes, money and household goods.
“We’ve been blessed to have been in multiple different communities that we’ve served and helped and nurtured, and just being good people in, and our kids are good kids, and all these different communities that we’re part of just started pouring in help,” Kirby said. “We did a GoFundMe. We had an initial goal. Hit that in two hours, and then it tripled that goal within the next 10 days.”
The GoFundMe, started after the fire, has raised close to $24,000.
“My whole career has been spent finding resources for people and you never realize like, how those resources work or don’t work until you’re in a position to have to use them,” Danielle said.
Kirby, who works part-time as a wrestling ring announcer for Freelance Wrestling in Chicago, said the company supported them by posting their GoFundMe page on social media and holding a raffle, raising $1,200 for the Van Vliet family. Freelance Wrestling plans another benefit show in August, he said.
Following a similar event last July, after Kirby’s heart transplant surgery, the company raised more than $8,000 to help him offset medical costs from the procedure, according to Freelance Wrestling’s Facebook page.
Danielle, Kirby, and their children have accumulated sentimental belongings over the years that were lost in the fire, things they can’t easily replace.
“We just have stuff that’s really, really sentimental to us,” he said. “Everyone’s Christmas gifts are gone. You have two 13-year-olds, their favorite clothes are gone. They both play instruments. Those are gone. Darby had a memory box under their bed that’s gone and then I’ve been a collector for all my life. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of autographs. Most of the people are dead, I’ll never replace them.”
Craig Frank, who owns The Rock Shop in Homewood with his fiancée, Laura Bruni, said they plan to help restock Darby and Chance’s book collections.
Frank first learned about the loss of their home when Danielle came into the shop, which sells an array of books, records and crystals, browsing for books and stones.
“She was sort of picking out a couple of books that the kids had been, maybe not treasured, but things that they read over and over, different things that they were interested in, just to sort of take their minds off of what had happened,” Frank said. “And she still seemed a little numb, still in a little shock.”
Frank said he had hoped to raise donations at the Words and Music event Feb. 2 at Thornton Distilling Co., but the donation table was not visible enough and attendees skipped over it. Still, store owners plan to have the teens come by to pick out books from the store and hope to do another event to raise money for the family.
“It’s not a 100% substitution, but at least it’s something,” Frank said.
As the Van Vliet’s work to recoup what they lost and regain stability, Danielle and Kirby said despite their hardships, they are grateful for the support of the communities they live and work in.
“We’ve helped a lot of people, and so a lot of people decided to help us,” Kirby said.
smoilanen@chicagotribune.com
