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Television: Navajo inventor and family to get 'Makeover' home

Posted on Tuesday, April 17 @ 20:28:52 PDT

Garrett Yazzie, a Navajo Nation teenager who invented a solar heater to power his Pinon home at 13, was to receive a new home this weekend, courtesy of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition."

Stumble It!

Yazzie and family will get a new home in a matter of days thanks to the work of about 800 volunteers. The Yazzies left Tuesday on a "vacation" and will return Tuesday to a new residence on the final day of taping by the ABC network. The program will air as the season premiere in August or September.

HomeLife Communities will build Yazzie and his family a "green" house that is in harmony with the Navajo principles of honoring Father Sky and Mother Earth, according to Kristine Thomas, Equal Employment Opportunity coordinator and tribal liaison for the Governor's Office of Equal Opportunity.

The current home of Georgia, Garalene, Garrett and Gwendolyn Yazzie is 150 miles northeast of Flagstaff in the middle of high desert. It is an old, broken-down single-wide trailer, plagued with problems. It has no running water, holes in the floors and ceiling, no insulation, no working bathrooms, a broken water heater, limited electricity, no phone line and boarded-up windows, Thomas said, quoting a HomeLife Web posting.

Garrett Yazzie earned acclaim when he came up with a method to heat his family's trailer. The invention was born of necessity, as youngest sister Gwendolyn suffers from severe asthma and epilepsy. Burning coal to warm the house during the cold winter months was not an option because it placed Gwendolyn at risk.

Yazzie took it upon himself to become the man of the house. With the help of the Internet and several online mentors, Garrett paid tribute to the Navajo principles of sustainable living, living off the land, and leaving no waste by creating a heating system made of an old car transmission and aluminum cans.

This invention not only warmed the house for his sisters and his mother, but it turned Yazzie into a "junkyard genius" with numerous national and local honors, awards and recognition.

ASU plans to announce the Garrett Yazzie Rising Star Scholarship Fund for Native American Students attending the university. In addition, Yazzie will be presented with a Presidential Scholarship to attend ASU when the family returns Tuesday.

The scholarship will be for any Indian student attending ASU who demonstrates a strong entrepreneurial spirit and/or interest in math and sciences, spokeswoman Jaynie Parrish said.

Guidelines will be worked out with the family. The endowment will take time to build and is not an individual fund for Yazzie, but instead would go to any Indian student and benefit a larger community.

The chain of events began last summer, when the family visited with Parrish and former Navajo Nation President Peterson Zah, now adviser to ASU President Michael Crow on American Indian affairs. They toured ASU and visited with several faculty and staff members. Yazzie entered the science fair through the American Indian Programs' annual science fair and youth programs at the Polytechnic Campus.

Zah and Pinon community members nominated the family for the show.

Taping began Tuesday, with a knock on the door of the Yazzie trailer and the notification that they were to take a vacation. The next day, workers moved the trailer off its lot, and Thursday, the new foundation was poured and a blessing given.

Construction was to conclude Sunday, with work on the interior taking place today. The family is to return Tuesday and move into their new home Wednesday.