HAPPY HOLLOW OFFERS FLOOD VICTIMS RESPITE
Wish Book readers can help provide low-income families impacted when Coyote Creek overflowed its banks with free visits to the park and zoo
When the rain kept pounding in February, Valerie Riegel kept a close eye on the level of Coyote Creek as it began to rise higher and higher. As the zoo curator for Happy Hollow Park & Zoo in San Jose, Riegel was custodian of a well thought-out emergency preparedness plan. With 30-plus years at Happy Hollow, she also knew the damage a flood could quickly inflict on the venue’s lower zoo — home to a host of animals including red pandas, meerkats, a capybara and a jaguar named Sophia. She ordered the animals evacuated to higher ground and makeshift shelters — the escape-prone meerkats were locked in a bathroom — as the creek spilled into the park. It would be nearly summer before the lower zoo was open again to visitors following weeks of cleanup and rebuilding to make the area safe again for animals and people alike. The portions of Happy Hollow that remain damaged are mostly behind-the-scenes support areas, with their top priorities being replacing guest bathrooms in the lower zoo area and figuring out how to replace the natural shade that was lost when the floodwaters washed away trees.
But the surrounding neighborhoods — filled with low-income families — haven’t bounced back as quickly. Many people lost their possessions, cars and even their homes to the flood and are still struggling to make it. During the initial recovery efforts, the Happy Hollow Foundation partnered with schools and community centers in the area to offer free tickets to affected residents, and they’d like to do that again with the help of Wish Book readers.
“Happy Hollow is part of their local community, and as a low-income family even with an affordable price sometimes a visit to the park is prioritized out,” said Shannon Heimer, Happy Hollow’s interim general manger. “This is what we can do to help take care of our neighbors. It’s a chance to create shared memories and take a respite from the daily things that families have to handle, especially families having to deal with having had their lives uprooted.”
And that might mean riding the Pacific Fruit Express roller-coaster, climbing around on the Redwood Lookout play structure, feeding goats at the upper zoo’s HH Ranch or paying a visit to those red pandas and Sophia the jaguar, all back in their familiar surroundings.
If there’s one silver lining to the tragedy of the flood, Heimer and Riegel say it’s
that Happy Hollow has been reminded of its place as the “backyard” for its community and its responsibility to provide those moments to recharge — not just for kids but for families.
“It helps us fulfill our mission, which is connecting people to nature through play,” Riegel said. “We modeled Happy Hollow as the world’s backyard
and we’re able to teach kids growing up that not all backyards are the same. Making those connections is really what Happy Hollow’s all about. It takes all of us working together to create a good society and a good world.”