ABC TV crews leave Chapman

? The crews for ABC television’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” have left Chapman, but the home makeover work continues.

The reality show was in Chapman for 10 days recently to work with hundreds of volunteers to build a new home for the Patrick Tutwiler family. Volunteers had also intended to work on the home of Justin and Crystal Baer and several others but ran out of time before completing it.

But Chapman resident James Jones and 15 to 25 volunteers planned to descend on the Baer home Saturday to do landscaping work and plant trees and shrubbery in the couple’s yard.

“We’re trying to get them in their house by Thanksgiving,” he said.

Although the Baers’ home was virtually destroyed by the tornado that hit Chapman on June 11, the family already has rebuilt most of the home and renovated most of the interior, Jones said.

When the tornado struck, Crystal was pregnant with the couple’s fourth child. The morning after the tornado, she gave birth to a daughter.

“I don’t recommend that for anyone, but it made quite a story,” said Crystal, a first-grade teacher at Chapman Elementary School.

Since the tornado, the Baers have been living in a rented house while rebuilding.

The ABC producers chose the Tutwiler family to receive a new home. Patrick Tutwiler is a U.S. Army specialist who was shot in the neck by a sniper in Iraq about a year before the tornado struck. Since being shot, Tutwiler has been recovering from a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.