NEW PORT RICHEY, FL -- After a Monday Night Football game in Charlotte, and four hours of sleep, Buccaneers running back, Warrick Dunn, came back home Tuesday morning. Not at his home - but someone else's.
For his annual Home for the Holidays program, Dunn helped pay for part of Sarah Cooke's New Port Richey house. He's covering the down payment and all of the furnishings inside. 35-year-old Cooke helped build the house herself, along with volunteers, through Habitat for Humanity. Dunn's organization, the Warrick Dunn Foundation, stepped in with the furnishings -including food and cleaning supplies. Cooke's home becomes Dunn's 82nd in the Home for the Holidays program - which helps single mothers. As soon as Cooke, a nurse, stepped into her furnished home with her kids, 15-year-old Devin and 10-year-old Lauren, she started crying. Dunn gave her a tour of the home - which was empty up until last week. There are three bedrooms - one for each family member. Even Cooke's new kitchen has a personalized towel, embroidered with the words, "Sarah's Kitchen" as well as a stocked cabinet shelves and a refridgerator filled with food. There's also a Christmas tree, with gifts from the Warrick Dunn Foundation underneath. Cooke explained her current conditions as tight quarters inside a double-wide trailer; mom and her two kids sharing a small space. She said there are holes in the ground and on the walls. Home ownership, Cooke said, has been her dream for a long time. With a new home, Cooke believes it'll help "them be comfortable, in a clean and safe environment where they can be proud to have their friends over, call their own."
Dunn's late mother never owned a home, but he says she always wanted to have accomplished that. In many ways, helping in the Home for the Holidays program is how he honors her. After handing the house keys over to the Cooke family, Dunn made his way to do the same thing for Robin Knight and her six children in Dade City.
Raised by his mother, Dunn was eager to show this single mom every detail of her home, now fully furnished by Aaron's furniture. "We're going to have the best Christmas ever," Cooke said."Hopefully she'd be proud, and hopefully, if she was here, she would've lived her dream by now," Dunn said.
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