Status: STILL FAMILY OWNED
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition veteran stories have gotten complicated with all the different outcomes flying around. As someone who’s followed these military family builds from episode day through the present, I learned everything there is to know about the Rodriguez family and their journey after the show. Today, I will share it all with you.
Why the Show Got Involved
The Rodriguez family’s situation was different from a lot of the builds I’ve covered. The patriarch was a military veteran who needed a prosthetic leg, and their existing home just wasn’t set up to handle his accessibility needs. We’re talking about a man who served his country and then came home to a house that physically couldn’t accommodate his condition. Doorways too narrow, bathroom layouts that didn’t work, all the stuff most of us take for granted.
What the show did here was actually pretty cool and went beyond the usual “tear it down and build something bigger” formula. They not only renovated the home to be fully accessible, but they also sent the family to Ohio to get the father properly fitted for his prosthetic. That’s not something you see in most episodes — the show usually sticks to the construction angle and calls it a day. With the Rodriguez family, they addressed the medical side too, which honestly felt like the right call.
The Home and Heritage
Probably should have led with this section, honestly, because the design choices here tell you a lot about what the show could do when it actually listened to the family’s story.
The renovation wasn’t just about ramps and wider hallways, though those were obviously critical. The crew designed the backyard as a tribute to the family’s Puerto Rican heritage. I’ve seen enough cookie-cutter Extreme Makeover builds to know that this kind of cultural sensitivity wasn’t always the norm, so it stood out to me. The family didn’t just get a functional house — they got a home that reflected who they were and where they came from.
That’s what makes the Rodriguez family’s story endearing to us folks who track these builds — it’s one of the relatively few cases where accessibility, cultural identity, and solid construction all came together in a way that actually worked long-term.
Life After the Show
And here’s the best part — the Rodriguez family’s post-show story is genuinely good news, which I can’t say about every family I’ve researched.
Rodriguez retired from the military as a master sergeant in September 2007. Master sergeant isn’t a rank you stumble into, by the way — that takes decades of service and a serious track record. After retiring, he didn’t sit around. He founded a company called RMI and still serves as its president today. The organization provides services directly to the Department of Defense, including combat training using simulations. So the guy went from needing the show’s help with his housing situation to running a company that contracts with the DoD. That’s a trajectory you love to see.
And the home? Still family owned. That’s the detail that matters most to me, honestly. After covering so many Extreme Makeover families who lost their houses to foreclosure or had to sell because of tax burdens, finding out the Rodriguez family held onto theirs is genuinely refreshing. It suggests the build was appropriately sized, the ongoing costs were manageable, and the family had the financial stability — especially with his military retirement benefits and the business income — to maintain it.
The Rodriguez story is what the show was supposed to be every time: help a deserving family, build something they can actually sustain, and move on to the next one. It didn’t always work out that way, but when it did, this is what it looked like.
Last verified: January 2026
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