HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) - The first red lights flicker to life about dusk on the western side of Black Mountain in Henderson. A heart forms as white lights turn on around it, and a rough outline of Nevada takes shape.
Las Vegas attorney David Koch and his 18-year-old son, Mason, hiked up the mountain April 17 to place the lights as a show of support for their community amid the response to the coronavirus.
It was a month after Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak closed casinos and businesses in the state to prevent people from congregating and spreading the COVID-19 respiratory illness and asked people to stay home.
“We were all starting to go stir crazy,” Koch told the Las Vegas Review-Journal .
Now, father and son watch the lights blink on nearly every night from their backyard in suburban Las Vegas.
“I heard the casinos were doing the same thing, with hearts on the sides in lights,” Koch said. “But, you know, how many locals see those? How many drive down the Strip every day? Especially now?”
Koch said it took a full 11 hours of scrambling up and down the rough terrain to position the lights - 40 white and 20 red solar lights on stakes that he and his son stuffed into duffel bags and backpacks and trekked up the mountainside,.
As the sun started to set and they headed down the trail to see their handiwork, he and his son weren’t sure how it would look, Koch said.
“We thought, ’This could be good, or it could be an epic failure. But we went down and saw that we did a pretty good job.”
At first, the heart was a bit off-center because it was the last part they placed, but they went back and straightened things out.
The idea for the lights came from Koch’s wife, who saw something similar on social media, showed it to him and remarked that they could do the same thing. He said it doubled as a ploy to get his son, a high school senior, out of the house.
Koch and his family hope the lights help lift people’s spirits during the governor’s stay-at-home order. He said he’s heard nothing but positive responses so far.
“You get nervous, you know. Sometimes you want to do something positive, but it’s not always received that way,” Koch said.
The community has shown it has taken the display to heart.
After the federal Bureau of Land Management contacted Koch and asked him to remove the lights from public land, supporters started an online petition asking to keep the display through the local response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Koch told KVVU-TV recently the government agency agreed to let the lights remain until at least mid-May.
“The message we wanted to send is that we, in Nevada, we’re all in this together,” he told the Review-Journal. “And we’re all going to get through it together.”
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