Cross-country aid mission starts for former LV family

David Kihara

Friday, Nov. 19, 2004 | 9:04 a.m.

While most people will be spending this Thanksgiving with friends or family, Sheri Wilcox and her husband will likely spend it with total strangers.

Wilcox, a fire inspector with Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, was to begin driving from Las Vegas to Anderson, Ind., today to deliver a U-Haul's worth of donated goods to a former Las Vegas family that lost everything in a fire last year.

Wilcox will be delivering the donated goods to Elysia and Anthony Arrigoni and their four children. The family used to live in the Ashton Apartments, behind the Clark County Library on Flamingo Road, where a fire broke out around 5 a.m . on Dec. 19, 2003, severely damaged four apartments, including the one the Arrigonis were residing in.

Elysia was in the apartment when the fire broke out. Although she and two of her children escaped the flames and smoke, her two toddlers, Christopher and Nicholas, who were ages 3 and 2 at the time of the fire, did not get out in time.

Both children suffered severe burns over most of their bodies. After being treated for six months at University Medical Center, Elysia took them to a hospital in Cincinnati that specializes in burns.

The Arrigonis have relatives in Anderson, two hours away. Currently, Nicholas is out of the hospital but is still receiving treatments for the burns. The other boy, Christopher, is still in the hospital.

Anthony Arrigoni moved to Anderson with the remaining two sons over the summer.

But because the family moved so quickly, they did not have a chance to take the donations the community collected. The donations, which include toys, furniture, household goods and clothes, were kept in storage.

Those goods are now loaded in a small U-Haul trailer that Wilcox and her husband, B. Scott Wilcox, plan to drive to the Arrigonis. She said that she heard about the case and heard about the problem of transporting the Arrigoni's donations to them. She agreed to spend the next six days on the road to deliver the goods. She has never met or spoken to the Arrigonis before.

"It's our time," to volunteer and help a family, Sheri Wilcox said. She said that she and her husband will probably spend two days driving to Anderson, and will spend one day with the Arrigonis.

If she has time, she and her husband will drive from Indiana to Texas so they can spend Thanksgiving with Sheri's mother.