Builder gives couple $25,000 to help with flood damage

Thursday, Jan. 30, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

What would you do if someone you barely knew gave you a check for $25,000?

"I don't know if we'll even cash it," Stan Timbrook of Dayton said. "I feel like crying when I even think about it."

Since Jan. 25, Stan and Donna Timbrook, like many area residents, have worked around the clock on their own and at least one other neighbor's flooding problems.

On Jan. 28, Dave McClelland, a Carson City builder who came by their Dayton Valley home to estimate the flood damage for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went out to his truck for a few minutes. When he came back to the house he handed Donna Timbrook a personal check that was, he said later, nearly his life's savings.

"I said, 'Dave, it's probably all the money you have,"' Donna Timbrook said. "He just said, 'You guys need it a hell of a lot more than I do."'

McClelland, 32, built three houses in the upscale Rancho Vista Estates subdivision. So far, all of McClelland's houses are still above water. He did not build the Timbrooks' home.

But McClelland said he believes the area is a former lake and it may just be a matter of time before a few wet years return the lower bowl of the Dayton Valley to a wetland.

And the Timbrook's 3,500-square-foot home is at the bottom of the bowl.

McClelland said when he bought his five-acre building parcels, the area's flooding propensity was not disclosed to him. When he sold his finished houses, however, McClelland had added the flooding information to the disclosure statements.

The Timbrooks said they were not as well-informed as McClelland's customers when they bought their dream home in 1994.

Stan Timbrook, a meat cutter, and Donna, who designed prototypes for ultrasound scanners at a medical equipment company in Mountain View, Calif., bought the airy, vaulted-ceiling home near the Dayton Valley Golf Course in 1994. They paid $325,000 for the house, then added a $48,000 barn for their two horses. Donna's mom and mildly retarded brother moved in with them and they collected a small menagerie of dogs and cats. They considered themselves semi-retired, working from their home, commuting only when they had to their jobs in the San Francisco Bay area.

Then the first flood hit in March 1995, Stan lost his job and soon after, Donna got sick.

As the water slowly drained from the Timbrooks' yard, McClelland and Stan Timbrook walked and waded its perimeter. Drowned field mice and other small rodents and animal excrement marked the water's edges. The Timbrooks' well and septic tank were still under water.

A gasoline pump noisily pulled water from beneath the house, its exhaust fumes wafting into the house through the open windows.

Inside, despite the Timbrooks' efforts with carpet dryers and antiseptic sprays, molds and mildew were beginning to grow.

"At this point, it's a health and safety issue," McClelland said. "When their septic fails, and it will, they're going to have to leave whether they want to or not.

"The last (1995) flood just about put them under and nobody seemed to care. When I think of the times we're coming into - all the wrong messages that are being sent out to kids, it bothers me."

McClelland, who has two small children, said he feels the answer, at least for him is to simplify.

"I trust in a handshake," he said. "And if someone needs help, help 'em."