SUPERIOR, Colo. - As the sun set on the day that marked one year since the Marshall Fire, Teddy Chavez and his mother Elsa said they remember it like it was yesterday.
"[My mom] said, 'What is that up there?' So I looked up at the sky and I'm like, 'That looks like a fire. You need to get back in the house," Teddy Chavez recalled, "There was a wall of fire coming right at us."
Even as they drove out of their smoke filled neighborhood, they were hopeful to come back. Later that night they'd fine out several family homes had been burned to the ground.
"We heard about it that night. We couldn't believe it. We just didn't believe it. We just said, 'No, we're going to go back home," said Elsa Chavez.
We first introduced you to the Chavez family not long after the fire. Their family has called this neighborhood home for more than half a century.
"My great grandfather homesteaded here in the early 50's, and he built three of the homes that burned down," said Teddy Chavez.
Decades of family photo albums and family mementos were gone, but the family's resiliency is still intact.
"I'm hoping to have a permit within the next day to a week, then two weeks have a permit. So then we start digging, at least my house first, and then we're going to do more," said Teddy Chavez.
They're hoping to have each of the family members' homes back up by the summer.
"We're planning on having a big barbecue or a luncheon out here for everybody. It's not just closure for us, but for everybody else," Teddy Chavez said.
He said getting to this point would not have been possible if it weren't for the help from their neighbors and complete strangers over the last year.
"It would have been easier for us just to say, 'Hey, sell the property and let's go somewhere else and buy a house,' but there's too much in this town. It's just home." they said.
