The people of Sugar Hill are buying their police chief a house.
Not because he'd like a new one.
But because he really needs it.
NHPR correspondent Todd Wellington has the story.
On a recent Saturday night the Sugar Hill meeting house was hosting quite a party.
Live music, good conversation and a spaghetti dinner complete with table service and all the fixings.
(piano music)
Everyone was there.
Everyone except the guest of honor.
He was six hundred miles away...
Police chief Jose Pequeno is in a non-induced coma at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C.
Sugar Hill Police Chief Jose Pequeno. (Courtesy Elizabeth Bagley)
The New Hampshire National Guard sergeant was injured in March while serving in Iraq.
His injuries are severe.
Updates posted on the CaringBridge.org website are reporting signs of improvement.
But it's clear Chief Pequeno is in for a long rehabilitation.
It's also clear that he, his wife and three small children won't be in it alone.
And that Saturday night spaghetti dinner and silent auction proved it.
Local restaurant owner Dennis Cote provided some dinner music and served as MC.
â€Good evening everyone. We hope you can find your seats and get served promptly here. I wanna welcome you and thank you all for coming to the 'Working Together To Bring Jose Home Festival' here we have going. This is a great effort by a few key people and many, many, many, many other people."
The event raised over twenty thousand dollars for the Jose Pequeno Fund.
And it put the total up now to about thirty thousand dollars.
At first there were no formal plans about what to do with the money raised.
But then Sugar Hill fire chief Alan Clark received a phone call from Pequeno's wife, Kelly, in Washington.
"She says 'I'm gonna eventually bring Jose home and I've got a problem because my house isn't going to be able to accomodate Jose.' She was wondering if I could coordinate us adding an addition on so she would have a place to bring Jose home to. And, well, I looked at her house and an addition is not going to be possible. But what we're gonna do as a community is we're gonna build them a new house- brand new ranch that will be handicapped accessible, if that's what he's gonna need. And we're gonna have that completed before school starts so his kids can be moved in and settled for when this fall's school starts."
Thirty thousand dollars toward a new house.
That's a lot for a town with fewer than 600 residents.
But no one in Sugar Hill is really surprised.
"Everybody here is a Jose lover. He's a great guy..."
Restaurant owner Dennis Cote says Pequeno fit right in from the day he was hired.
"He's a great cop... he's one of these guys that will just listen to everything you say. And then he might give you some advice. He was really quick at learning who's who in Sugar Hill. I mean, he knew everybody just about right away, he was really great. I mean, it's what a cop should be, you know."
The town's support for Pequeno did not begin with the news of his injury in March.
When he was activated for duty last year the community honored him with a going-away party.
And again, no one was surprised at the turnout - least of all Jennifer Gaudette.
She works in the Sugar Hill town offices.
"He's been with us for five years and in five years he's built up a following, so to speak... whether it's the little girls who come into the office that just want to say hi to the chief - or just people he stops and sees if they need some help. He's just a very kind man and he always has a smile for everybody and as a coworker, I think we have to tell you he's just one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to work with."
But the truest sign of support may lie in something much deeper than the spaghetti dinners, or even a new house.
Pequeno's boss, the Sugar Hill selectboard, has, so far, made no move to find a replacement chief.
Nor do they have any plans to do so.
Selectman Dick Beilefield says Pequeno may be in the hospital, and may face a lengthy recovery, but he's still the Sugar Hill police chief.
"We have not even discussed replacing him, and we probably won't for a while, until it's pretty obvious that he cannot come back and cannot do the job. We're just gonna sit tight for this moment and wait to see what happens."
The home building project has gained added momentum.
Local businesses have agreed to donate everything from a well to new furniture.
In Sugar Hill, fire chief Clark says that's just the way people are.
"Up in the North Country, we're maybe a little behind the times in that we still look out for each other and we care about our neighbors and so I think it's neighbors helping neighbors and the way life used to be. And we're helping Jose, but if it was somebody else I think we'd all be there doing the same thing."
Sugar Hill residents are planning a new fundraiser - a dinner dance with a live band - for later this summer.
For NHPR News, I'm Todd Wellington.
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