HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT - The Bayer family, left to right, Kyler, 7, Gillian, 9, Taylar, 15, Shaylyn, 18, new friends Angel the Cocatoo and Carol Oxley, 63, Audrey, 42, Derek Jr., 12, and Derek, 36, stand near a fifth-wheel on the family's property. The trailer was purchased for Carol and her bird to live in. Carol and Angel have lived in a 1991 Isuzu Impulse since 2005.

By MATT WARD
PVT
Her big blue eyes fill up with tears when you ask her why.
She can’t help it.
Shaylyn Bayer is just emotional that way. She cares about people.
Her family does, too.
The 18-year-old Pahrump woman was drying some clothes at Dirty Laundry late last month when she saw someone she mistook for a cleaning lady. A day or so later, Shaylyn went back and saw the woman again. This time the woman was sitting in a 1991 Isuzu Impulse out in the parking lot. The car seemed ready to burst, it held so many of the woman’s possessions. A big, white 13-year-old Cockatoo seemed to be the woman’s only companion. Shaylyn knew immediately that she’d happened upon someone who could probably use a helping hand.
Knocking at the car window, Shaylyn offered the woman, who was obviously living in her car, a $5 bill.
“No, that’s alright. Do me a favor and give that to a homeless person who really needs it,” the woman told Shaylyn with a smile.
Shaylyn went home, and tearfully, told her family about the woman who refused her money. Her parents, Audrey and Derek Bayer, decided to do something special for this woman they’d only just heard about.
Special doesn’t begin to describe the events that transpired next. What follows is a Thanksgiving tale for the ages.
To fully appreciate it, it’s worth getting to know the Bayers.
Learning to give
Derek is a Nye County juvenile probation officer. Helping families is something the 36-year-old does for a living. Audrey, 42, is a stay-at-home mom. She homeschools her children, rescues horses — they have 22 — and cares for the family’s flock of geese, ducks, and chickens, too. The family has a few dogs as well.
The Bayers seem to excel at caring.
In Christmas 2008, the family, including some of the boys who were in Derek’s probation program, collected coats for needy people and distributed them along with breakfast, lunch and dinner to local homeless, impoverished, or just lonely, people. A few weeks before that, the family — Audrey, Derek and Shaylyn, along with Taylar, 15, Derek, Jr., 12, Gillian, 9 and Kyler, 7 — visited the local Evergreen-run nursing home. The girls painted the female residents’ fingernails and made beaded jewelry to hand out as gifts. They gave the residents stuffed animals and Christmas ornaments, too.
Audrey says she and Derek agreed long ago to raise their children to be kind people.
“We’ve taught our kids that it’s better to give than to receive,” Audrey says.
How serious are these parents? It was around the same time in 2008 that the Bayers were featured in national news stories when Audrey made three of the children stand on a busy Pahrump street corner for five hours holding signs apologizing for their bad behavior — a couple of the children played a little too rough with some of the family’s animals.
Clearly, this family doesn’t mess around.
As for the holidays, Derek and Audrey aren’t big fans of the commercial aspects of it all.
“I’m real funny about the holidays; it’s so commercialized, it makes me sick,” Audrey said. “The world is so commercial. If your kids can learn to give, it’s so much more rewarding.”
When Audrey and Derek heard about the woman Shaylyn met at the laundry, they instinctively decided to find her and help her.
After all, Thanksgiving was just around the corner.

Angel – the cosmic Cockatoo
Carol Oxley has lived in her Isuzu Impulse for about six years. Her bird Angel is her roommate, a feathery fellow cosmic soul traveler, really.
The pair has traveled the West from Washington to Galveston, Texas and back. They’ve roamed from parking lot to parking lot, secluded desert spot to solitary back road in Pahrump since April 25. People at the Rebel gas station know them. Cops have run the tags of “the lady with the bird” a time or two. But nobody’s ever bothered them. A few have helped out along the way.
Oddly, Carol’s story is becoming less and less unique, particularly in today’s economy.
She doesn’t come across as crazy. She’s not addicted to anything. She’s not running from the law. She’s not running from a broken home or an abusive husband. None of those stereotypes seem to apply.
Carol is merely poor.
At 63 years old, she depends solely on a Social Security check for survival. She has a sister back home. She sees her every now and then. She was married and divorced about 30 years ago. She has no children.
During the 1990s Carol says she started living on disability in Federal Way, Wash. near Seattle. She’d worked for a number of years at an aerospace company. When a new landlord purchased the apartment complex she lived in and raised the rent in 2005, she says she decided she’d save more money — no rent, no utilities — if she lived in her car for a while. Except for a few months here and there with her sister, she’s been on the road with her Cockatoo ever since.
How is Angel as a companion?
“She’s been used to going in the car since she was about five months old,” Carol says. “She loves to travel. I take her everywhere. That’s the only way I could.”
Carol found Angel in a pet store when the bird was a baby. When Angel isn’t on Carol’s shoulder, she’s in her special travel carrier. Angel is potty-trained, sleeps under the covers with Carol and can dance like nobody’s business.
“She’s a lot of company. She’s a character. We’d sing, we’d talk. She loves rock-n-roll music,” she says boastfully.
Carol was at the laundry that day in late October where Shaylyn met her because the lighting helped her see better while she was feeding her Angel.

Lost and found
The way they pulled up behind her was a little unnerving.
She thought maybe they were at Terrible’s Town to eat. But the car doors opened and the people inside exited and started coming toward her. When she saw Shaylyn, she was surprised — and relieved.
“I had only been there 10 or 15 minutes,” Carol says. “I didn’t know what was going on.”
Audrey was with Shaylyn and Derek. They’d been looking for Carol for about two hours. When they finally saw her car, they were ready to offer their help.
Audrey immediately asked Carol to come home with them, that she was welcome to use the shower or stay there or anything she needed.
“She was normal. You could tell she wasn’t a drinker. And the bird — it was so well taken care of. That’s a good indicator. And the money — that spoke volumes,” Audrey said.
Carol, taken aback, said she needed to think about the family’s generous offer.
Then Audrey made a big promise: “I told her to give me three days and I’d have a place for her to stay.”
Carol didn’t really want to impose.
“They have kids to take care of,” she says.
Not messing around
Audrey hit Craigslist as soon as she got home. She was on a mission. Her quarry was a home for Carol. She would take anything with four walls and a roof, preferably on wheels so they could move it onto their property on Hawkins Way.
They found a fifth wheel in Las Vegas the next morning. When Derek explained why the family was buying it, the seller chopped his price in half. Coincidentally, this particular trailer was purchased in Pahrump and moved to Las Vegas, where it was used for only about four months — for a similar purpose, too.
Dwyte Brooks and his wife Heather bought the 28-foot trailer from one of Dwyte’s co-workers at the post office in Pahrump. It was moved to Las Vegas to help out a young couple who was down on their luck. When the couple got on their feet, Brooks decided to sell it.
“We had it up for about a month and a half on Craigslist. They called and said they wanted it. When they told us it was for someone who was living in their car, we said just give us a little down payment. We were like come take it,” Dwyte said. “We haven’t worried about the money, we have the title and we’re in no rush at all.”
Dwyte said the person he bought the trailer from lived in it for about 15 years. He said the price can’t be beat, and besides, “it’s serving its purpose” by helping someone else.
How it would get back here was another ordeal.
Fifth wheels require a special tow hitch to haul. Derek called all his friends. So did Audrey. The physically imposing probation officer finally started asking people around the neighborhood for help.
“I went door to door, this crazy bald guy. All I got was no,” he said.
Audrey put an ad on Craigslist seeking help. One guy wanted $250 to do it. She said she couldn’t spend that much.
“I didn’t get any responses. I went on Facebook. Finally, at seven in the morning the next day, a guy calls me and says he’ll do it. I couldn’t believe it. I’m bawling,” Audrey said.
The man on the other end of the line was Wayne Bradshaw. Wayne is always on Craigslist, trading items or buying things for his home. He lives about a mile from the Bayers with his wife Kim. When he saw Audrey’s online plea for help, he discussed it with his wife for about a second. He met Audrey and Derek at the highway near Manse Road and wouldn’t even take gas money to pick the trailer up.
“My wife and I decided that someone needed some help, so we helped,” Wayne said.
The trailer was parked on the Bayers’ property that afternoon.
But it wasn’t long until Audrey was crying again. After searching for Carol, to deliver the good news, they couldn’t find her.

Moving day
“I thought we scared her off,” Audrey said.
It was meant to be, though, because the family and Carol finally reconnected at Petrack Park later that day. Audrey brought along a printout of the Craigslist ad for the fifth wheel.
“They came and said they had some news for me. They gave me this printout. I was looking at it and trying to figure out what it was,” Carol said. “How can these people go and buy me a fifth wheel when they’ve only known me for 12 hours?”
“That’s unheard of.”
When the fifth wheel finally arrived, a few quick repairs were necessary to make it livable. A new refrigerator, a heater, some sheets, dishes and a borrowed television make it comfortable. A patch in the floor needs mending, but little else.
“It’s in good condition. It just needs some TLC,” Audrey said.
Carol has lived on the Bayers’ property for about a month now, sharing meals with the family, enjoying a respite from the crowded Isuzu, and wondering how she got so lucky. She’s getting to know the children, all the animals and her new friends.
“There are good people in the world. They’re just hard to find. They’re few and far between,” Carol said.
Audrey and Derek say Carol can stay as long as she wants, come and go as she pleases and get whatever she needs. Carol hopes to bring her sister down to visit at some point.
Shaylyn, who shares a birthday with Carol, said the outcome for the woman she met a month ago in the parking lot of the laundry is exactly what she’d hoped for.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said.
The family and Carol are looking forward to a big Thanksgiving dinner.
Angel, too.