Family recreates Blockbuster for autistic son heartbroken over store's closure

SHARYLAND, Texas — A Texas family went the extra mile for their son with autism, recreating his favorite Blockbuster store at their home after the store shut its doors.

The Zuniga family’s gesture for their 20-year-old son, Hector Andres Zuniga, went viral this week after his brother, Javier Zuniga, posted photos of the surprise for his older brother on Twitter.

“My autistic brother was sad that Blockbuster was closing down,” Javier Zuniga, 19, wrote. “So my parents made a mini one at home for him!”

The photos showed Hector Andres’ father, also named Hector Zuniga, showing him the shelves, complete with Blockbuster signs, that the family bought from the Sharyland, Texas, store as it sold off its inventory. The shelves were full of Hector Andres’ favorite titles, from Elmo and Barney to Rugrats and Blue’s Clues.

Blockbuster, which went bankrupt and closed nearly all of its stores in 2013, has just 12 stores left in the U.S., nine of them in Alaska. The rest are in Texas, according to the New York Post.

Hector Zuniga told The Huffington Post that his son would go to the store at least twice a week to rent movies and buy snacks. The staff, who waited on him since he was 13, knew him well.

They also knew how hard he would take the news of the store’s closure. They pulled Hector Andres’ mother, Rosa Zuniga, aside a few months ago and broke the news to her.

She called her husband, who knew immediately that it would take some finesse to explain the closure to their son.

"(He) is a happy-go-lucky kid. He's all heart, he's very tender, but like anyone else, he has bad days," Hector Zuniga said. "And we knew one of those bad days was around the corner when we found out that the Blockbuster was about to close."

It was during that phone call that the parents hatched their plan to ease the change in their son’s routine.

"The employees told us when they'd start selling their stock, and when they did, I was one of the first customers in the store," Hector Zuniga told The Huffington Post.

The family secretly bought everything they would need to set up Hector Andres’ own private Blockbuster. Employees of the store helped by setting aside anything they knew that he would like.

When the store closed its doors over the weekend, the family was there with Hector Andres to help him understand that he would no longer be able to rent movies there. He predictably got upset, but his father told him not to worry, that there was a surprise waiting for him at home.

While Hector Andres worked on a puzzle, his father and brother set up his new at-home Blockbuster. When he finally saw it for himself, his father said, “His eyes were as big as saucers.”

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The joy on his face was captured in the photos Javier Zuniga shared on Twitter. The tweet immediately took off and, by Wednesday morning, had been retweeted more than 32,000 times. People were amazed by the steps the family took to make Hector Andres happy.

“Please tell your parents how incredible they are, and thank you so much for documenting this beautiful moment,” one woman wrote.

“Your parents are absolutely amazing for this,” another stated.

Many people said the tweet made them cry. Some shared other popular memes to express how emotional the Zuniga family’s story made them.

“Pfft, you gotta con … *clears throat* control your … *clears throat again* just leave me alone, I stubbed my tow (sic) on these emotions,” one man wrote.

The family said the gesture was “a hit” with Hector Andres, who grabbed several DVDs off of the shelves and ran to his room to watch them. But not before thanking his father.

"His way of saying, 'I love you,' is by going up to you and grabbing your earlobe," Hector Zuniga told The Huffington Post. "So he came up to me and grabbed my ear. It was one of those moments that us parents live for."

Cox Media Group