Built on an island not that far, far away, is a house -
but not as we know it.
That is because with its blinking, strobing,
technicoloured lights, the metal saucer-shaped home of retired
industrial arts teacher Roberto Sanchez Rivera, 58, is meant to
look just like a grounded UFO.
Resting on the slopes of Juana Diaz in Puerto Rico, the
otherwordly house exists only to prove a girl wrong after 40-years,
and all because Rivera suffered the same fate of many geeks across
the planet - he was dumped.
As a love-struck teenager,
Rivera was an artistic student from a poor family and he would send
his girlfriend love notes with little UFO's drawn round the
side
He promised he would one day
build a home for the two of them that resembled the flashing flying
saucers of the B-movies that they used to watch in the local movie
theater.
However, one day, after three months of seeing each other
she unceremoniously ended the relationship with a Dear John note,
sending Rivera to the brink of suicide as he contemplated jumping
from the 13th floor of his apartment.
'It ended because she wrote him a letter saying she did
not want to continue the relationship, because she didn't love him
anymore,' said Maria Martinez, the 56-year-old current girlfriend
of Rivera who lives with him in the UFO home and translates English
for him.
'It was the mother who explained to him that her daughter
had said that he would never amount to anything in life. He was
shocked.
'He used to live on the 13th floor, and he wanted to throw
himself off, but he held himself back and said, ‘No, I’m going to
show her, this person, I’m going to work that much harder to show
her who I am.’
Roberto Rivera, (right),
with Maria Martinez on the roof of his flying saucer home in Juana
Diaz, Puerto Rico
Completing his studies at Pontifical Catholic University
in Ponce, Rivera studied design and fine arts, and resolved to
build his UFO house and make it with his own hands.
Purchasing the land in 2002 for $95,000, Rivera spent the
next ten years and $150,000 constructing his unusual futuristic
home - even wiring it up to emit the famous five tone signature
theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The spot he picked is visible for miles around by drivers
on the passing highway and Rivera intentionally chose the hillside
so that the unnamed girl who broke his heart would see the UFO home
and know that he had amounted to something.
'He wanted to do it in a certain spot, so that if she were
to travel she would see it day in and day out and regret those
words,' said Maria Martinez .
Scrimping and saving over the ten years it took him to
build the house, Rivera fitted out his home not with expensive high
tech appliances, but with dollar-store ashtrays made to resemble
antennae and used $1.99 salad bowls for his flashing light
fixtures.
He built the cupboards by hand and even fashioned the
toilet seat in his flying saucer house to match the alien
surroundings that he wanted to create.
Most of the furniture in the home is raised off the ground
- Rivera says this reminds of him living in the barrio and having
to lift furniture to keep the home clean and tidy.
As the fame of his alien house on the hillside grew in the
surrounding area, Rivera received an unusual visit four years ago
in the dead of night - the girl who had broken his heart 40-years
ago.
During those years he had married, had two children and
divorced himself, but his first love called him up out of the blue
and he invited her to see the home which he had built with any
piece of scrap metal he could find.
The octagon home was in its final stages of completion and
the girl was so impressed she told Rivera that she wanted to get
back together with him, but Rivera knew that finally his feelings
for the girl had gone and turned her down.
Satisfied that he had completed what he promised himself
he would, Rivera, who claims he has no interest in science-fiction
has advice for anyone who finds himself in the same
predicament.
'You should never say to any human being, 'You can never
accomplish anything in life.'