Fire destroys woman's mission to serve homeless

Houston (KTRK) -- Firefighters spent the morning on the scene of a fire at a construction site in southeast Houston.

This building represents 10 years of hard work for Sheila Swirczynski.

"We were 85 percent done," she said. "Just to go through this right now is not a good feeling at all."

Swirczynski and her mom run Love and Joy Personal Care Center. Next door to this building is a 26 bed facility for mentally ill homeless people, a passion sparked by her sibling's fight with mental illness. She planned to serve even more people in this new building.

"Every day I walk through it. I show off this building, even though we are in the construction stage because it's something I am proud of. To watch it like this just go down and melt.. .All that material cost a lot," she said.

Swirczynski says they've had problems with people taking shelter inside during construction so they put boards up to keep them out. Arson investigators are looking into whether those premature guests may have caused the fire or if it was something else. Staff and friends comforted a heartbroken Swirczynski.

Staff member Yvonne Jacobs explained, "This is very upsetting because when I retired from the hospital district, I took on trying to do a mission in the community to help others. And now this is what we get."

"I don't know where we go from now, but we are going to rebuild," Swirczynski promised. "We are going to try to pick up the pieces and start over even though it's going to be difficult."

HFD tells us there were a couple of people inside when the fire started. They got out unharmed. We're also told firefighters rescued a dog and her puppies from the building.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.