By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM — Andrea Victoria Velez, 2½ years old, scooted around the cozy living room, past the roaring fireplace, climbed onto one of the four couches, looking for mischief.

Finally, she found it, getting her finger stuck just a bit in the front door.

She ran, crying, to her mother, who was sitting on one of the couches, for consoling. She crawled up into her lap, feeling at home, the tears quickly ending.

“To her, this is home,” said Andrea’s mother, Yira Alfaro, looking around the welcoming common room of the Ronald McDonald House of Durham. “It’s where she had her first steps, spoke her first words. It’s full of memories for her. It’s the only home she’s really ever known.”

The house, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week, has been home to nearly 30,000 families over the past three decades. The first Ronald McDonald House in North Carolina — and when it opened, the first between Atlanta and Washington and only the 13th Ronald McDonald house nationwide — it offers a home away from home for families of seriously ill children being treated at local hospitals.

With its brightly decorated small bedrooms — including five suites — chock full of stuffed animals, a playroom, a teen computer room, a well-equipped kitchens and an airy dining room, the house is a home.

“It’s so nice to be able to come here,” said Dianne Kerr, from Asheville, whose grandson — from Morehead City — was recovering from surgery at Duke. “It’s so awesome to have something like this.”

In the late 1970s, when the idea for the house arose, there were only two Ronald McDonald houses nationwide, both supported by professional sports teams.

“But the need was clear,” recalled Carolyn Penny, the founding president of the initial board of directors. “When our daughter was an oncology patient at Duke, we saw the hardships families were going through.”

John Falletta, a pediatric oncologist, brought together the McDonald’s corporation, Duke officials and about a dozen local volunteers.

McDonald’s gave the group $350,000 to buy a ramshackle, early-1960s building on Alexander Avenue from the Baptist State Convention.

The building had been used by the Baptist Student Union for meetings, parties, games of pingpong and square dances. “It was pretty much a barn, and in pretty bad shape,” Penny said. “There was moss growing on the cinderblock walls.”

Renovations took almost two years. To fund the renovations, McDonald’s held promotions and volunteers went out into the local community. Civic groups, church groups, neighborhood associations all offered financial support, donations and volunteers. The furniture market in High Point helped furnish all the bedrooms.

When the house opened in 1980, it offered 13 bedrooms. Over time, but needing to stay within the building’s original footprint, subsequent expansions have created more than twice the space and 26 separate rooms. “And we are continually looking for ways to expand even more,” said Noreen Strong, executive director of the house.

Today, the house has an annual operating budget of more than $1 million, 24-hour staffing and even a basketball court — with its own logo — out back. “We were all unseasoned volunteers but we’ve been able to do it because we’ve all believed in the concept and the mission,” Penny said. “We saw the need and have tried to fill it.”

The need was great for Alfaro and her daughter Andrea.

They are from Lajas in Puerto Rico, and when Andrea was born with hurler’s syndrome — a genetic disorder that can cause death by the age of 10 — they came to Duke, where Andrea had a cord blood transplant on Feb. 14, 2008. They’ve been living in the Ronald McDonald House ever since, as Andrea continues to recover and receives further treatments.

“The transplant went really well, but recovery is very, very slow,” Alfaro said. “If not for this house, there wouldn’t be a recovery. We wouldn’t have the money to pay for an apartment, and everything that goes with it. We wouldn’t be able to be here.”

Alfaro hopes that in four to five months, she and her daughter can go back to Puerto Rico. But it will be difficult, she admits, to leave the house.

“It’s not only a place to stay,” she said. “Here, you get to talk to families, families who are all going through the same things you are. That really provides comfort. They understand, when no one else does.”

Sometimes, she said, the families cry together.

“Sometimes we cry tears of hope and sometimes tears of sadness,” Alfaro said. “You get so close to people here you cry when they go home and you cry when they have to stay.”