A day celebration quickly turned into a day of mourning for a Windsor family.
Ashley Bearelle died Jan. 22, just eight days after she had to have an emergency C-section giving birth to a healthy baby-boy. The community has since rallied around her husband Brandon Propolec and her three sons.
Riversides' Baby Envy Boutique began taking in supplies for the newborn, a Go Fund Me page has gathered almost $27,000, and Operation Keep Windsor Warm gathered close to $2,000 in prizes to raffle off through its Facebook group.
"There's been bad things through 2018 to 2019 with a lot of things going on in our city and just to see that act of kindness that just continues to pay it forward because acts of kindness help people heal," says family member Kristina Lioacono. "Total strangers ... the amount of support we've received in the last couple days has been truly and genuinely amazing. It's kind of healing to our hearts know that people care."
She says the help will lift the burden Brandon will face suddenly having to raise his sons without his life-partner.
"We can never mend his broken heart ... that saying, it takes a village to raise child, it truly does, it honestly does," she says. "The amount of people at the house, the amount of people has truly touched all our hearts."
Lioacono says money raised will go into a trust-fund for the boys, and any extra baby-supplies will be re-gifted to someone who needs them in Bearelle's memory.
Bearelle and her husband have been together for more than 15-years — she was just 31 years old.