Cancer patient greeted with home makeover
Friends, family band together to help Simi man battling disease
By Eliav Appelbaum eliav@theacorn.com

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers WELCOME HOME- Jim Faulkner gets a hug from longtime friend Sue Huddleston of Simi Valley, in front of Jim and Karalyn Faulkner's Simi house. Friends and family surprised Faulkner with a home makeover while he was in Louisiana for two weeks having cancer surgery.

Pulling into his driveway with his wife, Karalyn, Jim Faulkner noticed his cement mixer sitting on the front lawn.

He thought to himself, "What's that doing there?"

Seconds later, Jim took notice of the rest of his house . . . and quickly forgot about the mixer he called "an eyesore."

"I was kind of like, 'What the heck happened here?'" Jim said. "I don't even know what to say. It's pretty amazing."

While Jim was in Louisiana undergoing a 12hour surgery to remove malignant tumors, a group of about 20 friends and family members worked on giving the Faulkners' home a mini-makeover.

For two weeks, the large contingent joined hands and resources to complete all the projects Jim had started but couldn't finish because of his 3½-year battle with cancer. After Jim's successful surgery, he and Karalyn arrived home in Simi Valley on Oct. 31 to discover even more good news.

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn NewspaperENJOYING THE CHANGES- Kyle Faulkner, 11, demonstratehis jumping technique from the front porch to the lawn as his familyfrom left, brother Gradon, 15, and parents Jim and Karalyn pose behind him in front of their newly remodeled home. About 20 people worked on the house, repainting the exterior, adding new windows, brick work and landscaping the yard.

For Jim, the entire makeover was a surprise.

"I just burst into tears. It was so great to see Jimmy so happy," Karalyn said. "It's all been a miracle, the whole thing. We tried the surgery a year ago in Los Angeles; the surgeons stopped after six hours because they couldn't get to it. He has a new lease on life, and our house has a new lease on life. It's great, it's a new beginning."

Karalyn's sister, Julie Mason, and longtime friends Paul and Chellee Meehleis of Simi Valley and Craig and Beth Broderick from San Diego spearheaded the project.

"The house was kind of in disarray," said friend Peter Conway, who also helped in the makeover. "Jim didn't have the time to deal with it with everything he's going through."

And there was quite a bit to do. The exterior of the house, which was built in 1959, was sandblasted and power washed before it was painted a pleasant light brown- a marked improvement over the former "ugly blue" color.

New windows were installed. The front walls of the house were lined with waist-high river rock. Freshly planted flowers graced the front of the lawn below the rock. New sprinklers and timers were installed.

Solar lights were put in along the walkway. The grass was fertilized and reseeded. A new doorbell and a new address sign greet visitors.

Flat stones were placed at the porch entrance to discourage the Faulkners' younger son, Kyle, 11, from constantly jumping off the concrete porch to the lawn. Kyle jumped anyway, while his older brother, Gradon, 15, watched from the driveway with a friend.

A big yellow sign on the garage door said, "Welcome Home JIMMY AND KARALYN."

The friends also did small jobs inside the house and made sure Karalyn would return to a clean home. The project started on Oct. 15, the day Jim and Karalyn flew to Louisiana. Jim, who had never missed a day of work until his cancer diagnosis, actually worked a half shift that Monday before he flew out.

"Now he has to rest," Karalyn said. "He has no excuse to work around the house."

The project gained a lot of ground on the first of the two weekends the Faulkners were gone. While 15 people sanded the house, other friends prepared a picnic-style lunch. Mason paid for the paint and lots of the materials. Paul Meehleis' sister, Heidi Jacobsen, and her husband, Joe, own a landscaping company and donated all the plants. Conway installed a large Halloween lawn ornament he won at Costco.

The Brodericks came up to help the first weekend. Soon after, with fires ravaging much of the area, they were evacuated from their San Diego home. So they drove up to the Faulkner residence and did more work last weekend. The Brodericks' home was spared by the fire.

While relatives kept watch over Gradon and Kyle, friends had a meal wheel going; different families brought dinner to the boys every night their parents were out of town.

"Everyone came together," said Meehleis, an elevator technician like Jim. "We wanted to give him a nice home to come home to. He would do the same for us. That's the kind of guy he is."

"Jim's the one always helping everyone else," Conway said. "If something's wrong with your plumbing, he's over at your place fixing it. . . . He's just a really super person."

Jim's surgery on Oct. 18 at the Ochsner Medical Center in Kenner, La., was performed by Drs. Philip Boudreaux, Yi-Zarn Wang and Eugene Woltering.

Although it was complicated, the outcome was successful.

"They went in and dug around for a long time," Jim said. "They kind of stopped in the middle, talked to my wife and went back in. They were almost ready to quit but they went a little farther and got what they wanted."

Surgeons removed two tumors larger than golf balls from his pelvis. Jim will return to Louisiana for a checkup early next year. He'll eventually need another surgery to remove the remaining cancer near his liver.

If he was in pain on Halloween night, Jim hid it well when friends and neighbors came to visit. Wearing a New Orleans Saints T-shirt and sweatpants, he sat with his family on a bench, hugged friends and chatted with neighbors. He was tired, but he couldn't stop smiling.

"There's an endless list of people to thank," Jim said, "just about everyone in Simi Valley. I appreciate everything they've done for me. It's quite the city to live in. Everybody looks out for everybody."