Lexington police officer helps renovate two homes on De Porres Avenue

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ)- Just in time for Christmas, a Lexington family of five has a freshly renovated home to unwrap presents in.

Since late summer, a Lexington police officer has been using all his free time to give the family’s home an extreme makeover.

A family member asked Officer Ryan Holland to help repair Ms. Melody Clark’s collapsed garage roof, but as he spent more time at the house, he realized it truly needed a full makeover.

Clark has spent 20 years serving others, delivering free lunches and teaching Sunday school.

“I’ve seen Melody probably at 15 or 20 different events, donating her life to youth in our community, and she never once came up to me and said I need help,” Holland said.

Clark did need help.

Fighting illness, her daughter and three grand kids moved in to escape abuse. As they tried to heal together, the home deteriorated around them.

“I tried to take things on my own and I realized you can’t do it by yourself,” Clark said.

Officer Holland stepped in, raising about $60,000 worth of labor and materials and giving about 80 hours a week of his own time to renovate the house.

The big reveal came on the last work day before Christmas. Clark and family arrived in a limousine. Holland opened the door for a tearful Clark as a crowd cheered.

Holland handed over the keys and took Clark on a tour of her new home. She cried and praised Jesus in every room. At one point, she even fell into Holland’s arms in excitement.

Together, they hung the final touch, a cross that spells out “amazing grace” in horse shoes.

“It’s beautiful,” she told Holland.

“I love you,” they exclaimed to each other.

“Let there be peace on earth,” Clark said.

Officer Holland was not done.

While renovating Clark’s home, he found someone else in need just down the street.

“The lord led me to her house in order to help Mr. Sykes, to find Mr. Sykes,” Holland said.

Mr. Sykes is a 74-year-old army veteran who still works at Samaritan Hospital. Holland was trying to find a service project for some navy recruits when the two met.

Friday Sykes got the celebrity treatment.

“Hey! Hey,” Holland said excitedly as he opened the limousine carrying Mr. Sykes.

He handed over the keys to his remodeled home.

As Officer Holland got to know Sykes better, he realized the septuagenarian had been sleeping in a chair and living without heat, air conditioning, or running water since 2015. Sykes thought he was going without so he could help a friend pay for chemo. It was a scam.

“No one in our community should ever live like that,” Holland said.

He raised about $60,000 worth of labor and materials. Plus he gave about 80 hours a week of his own time to gut the house and renovate it. Now, Mr. Sykes barely recognizes it!

“Is this my house?” he joked to the crowd gathered to welcome him home.

His daughter says in two weeks, it will be 37 years since her parents brought her home from the hospital to the very same house.

“I am so, ever so grateful for every person that had any and everything to do with how you restored my childhood home,” Carolyn Sykes said, tearfully.

One day at a time is what Mr. Sykes tells everyone at the hospital. It is what Officer Holland says he learned as faith brought his family together with two on De Porres Avenue.