A Tri-Cities family is getting a big boost in their first year of homeownership thanks to a Gesa Credit Union promotion.

Martha and Rafael Quiroz used a loan from Gesa to buy the home in February. A while later, they got a surprise phone call.

It was from their loan officer, Fernando Avalos, who works out of Gesa’s headquarters in south Richland.

At first, the family was worried. Then came the good news: they’d won $25,000 through Gesa’s “Your Mortgage on Us” campaign.

Credit union leaders came up with the idea earlier this year.

“We were looking out on the economic environment. We saw that inflation was going up, interest rates were rising, and home prices weren’t coming down,” Keven Gray, chief retail officer, told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. “We thought, ‘What’s a creative way to help members obtain homeownership?’”

They came up with Your Mortgage on Us, where “any member who received a new mortgage with Gesa – that could be a purchase or a refinance – through July, they were entered into a drawing,” Gray said, noting that the Quiroz family was randomly selected.

They were overjoyed.

“We never thought something like this would happen to our family,” Martha and Rafael said in a statement provided by Gesa. “We are very grateful for this program that has helped us.”

Help from their oldest daughter, Carina, a first-generation college graduate with a new job, also was “pivotal,” the statement said.

Gray described the homebuyer promotion as one of many ways Gesa works to help its members and the community. It’s given more than $3.2 million this year through donations, scholarships and programs such as its Affinity Debit Card Program, Gray said.

“We want to impact the communities we serve. As a member-owned cooperative, our members and our communities are at the center of everything that we do. This is just one example of our mission,” Gray said. “It’s really people helping people. We’re really focused on that – giving back and impacting our communities.”

The Quiroz family is giving back, too.

Martha and Rafael, who preferred not to disclose which city their new home is in, said they’ll use any money left over after the first year of their mortgage is covered to help a local woman battling cancer and a community member who needs life-saving medication, according to the Gesa statement. 

They also want to open a daycare.