Contractor pays it forward

Rick Loebig kind of looks the part of Santa Claus with his long white beard. He certainly has the heart for the position.

A contractor, he came to the rescue when 86-year-old Albert Ramirez faced being homeless after the city declared his "rock house" unsafe for occupancy just five months shy of paying off his mortgage.

Loebig shrugs and says he didn't do much. But he was the spark plug that pulled the community together to build a new home for Ramirez.

"He is my neighbor," Loebig explained. "We need to look out for each other."

When he heard it would cost Ramirez $4,500 to have the house demolished, Loebig rounded up some help to tear it down for nothing.

"Then I wondered where Albert would live," Loebig said. "And I wondered how hard it would be to build him a nice little one-bedroom house."

That thought led to some phone calls and an outpouring of offers to help from the community. By fall, Ramirez had a new home.

"When I handed Albert the keys to his new house, there were tears in his eyes," Loebig recalled. "He went from homeless to having a brand new, paid-off house. It makes your heart feel good."

Down deep, Loebig said, "I knew we could do it. I just didn't know it would go so quickly."

Or with so many offers of help from the community.

"There was no hesitation when I called people," he said.

And that in the midst of a recession that has hit the construction industry particularly hard.

While over the years he has had a hand in the construction of a variety businesses and homes in the Yuma area, that little house is the project he's most proud of, hands down, he said.

It's also the latest in a list of projects Loebig has helped with to better the community.

"It's that John Wayne thing," he said, explaining that he watched a lot of movies starring "The Duke" back in the 1950s when he was growing up in a little town in Iowa. That and all the stories he heard from the World War II veterans who would gather at the bar his father operated.

"I was indoctrinated to do your part," Loebig said.

So a year out of high school, he joined the Marine Corps. After a 13-month tour in Vietnam, he was transferred to Yuma.

"I met a girl and got married," he said as way of explanation on why he stayed.

Besides, he said, "I fell in love with the desert. It reminded me of the flat open space in Iowa but without the snow or rain or cold."

After obtaining an associate degree in business at Arizona Western College on the GI Bill, he got into an apprenticeship program in construction.

"I always liked doing that as a kid," he said, relating a story about a deal he struck with his father. "We had a little ranch-style house and there were five kids. When I was 13, I asked if I could build a room for myself in the basement. He made me work for it."

After working for other contractors for a while, in 1978, Loebig started his own construction company, R.A. Loebig General Contractor. He often worked as a subcontractor doing framing and carpentry work for such projects as the Yuma Golf and Country clubhouse and many of the early HUD housing projects. The last several years, he's been an occasional job supervisor for a variety of school projects and since 2001 has been the job supervisor for Contractor Lisa Medina for projects at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

"Being an ex-Marine, I feel like I'm home," he observed of that particular job.

He's also done some remodeling for Hospice of Yuma. That's paying it forward, he said, for the help his family received from the organization during his wife's death from cancer when his two children were small.

And he's done some remodeling for other nonprofit organizations. "I would rather do something for someone than give them money," he explained.

Today, his son Mike is his father's foreman while his daughter works for a medical research company in Sweden. He beams as he talks about his two grandchildren - "the devil and the angel in my life."

And he's proud of his adopted community.

"When someone needs a helping hand, people respond," he said. "I see that every day in Yuma. They appreciate what they have and share with others."

Joyce Lobeck can be reached at jlobeck@yumasun.com or 539-6853.