As hurricanes battered states across the southern United States, many families found themselves with severely damaged home as the record-breaking storms tore a swath of destruction.
Hurricane Harvey was one of the first to make landfall this season, dropping record-breaking rainfall and horrific flooding across southwest Texas.
At least one St. Clair County woman was moved to help the people of Texas. Marine City resident Stacy Bellia has been fundraising for Harvey victims, and is using social media to get the word out.
Bellia says it all started when she saw a status update on Facebook as Harvey bore down on Texas. In the update, her partner's niece, Jennifer Walker, reported that her Houston home was at risk of flooding. Worried, Bellia kept a close eye on Walker's feed, and while she and her husband were safe, their neighborhood and home were flooded with several feet of water.
"We were so glad they were safe, but when Jennifer posted photos of the flood damage to their home, we were stunned," Bellia says. What she saw in the photos on social media was far worse than what she had imagined, and since she knew most Texans don't carry enough (or even any) flood insurance, Bellia sprang into action.
"My first thought was to cover the basics--food, water, gas--and of course those things cost money," Bellia explains. A single mother herself, Bellia didn't have a surplus of funds to send, so she took back the cans and bottles she had sitting in her garage for the deposit refund, and asked her Facebook friends if they had any empties they'd like to contribute.
Within hours, Stacy's request had been spread across Facebook hundreds of times, and she began receiving messages from all over St. Clair County from people with generous hearts and empties to share.
"We just started picking up literally truckloads of empty cans and bottles and then returning them," Bellia says, "But what surprised me more than anything was how people would also just hand me cash, in addition to the returnables." Bellia adds that it wasn't just people she knew that offered her their empties--strangers and even local businesses wanted to help out.
So far, Bellia says, she's collected about 10,000 empty cans and bottles. Once she's traded them in for the cash--a notoriously dirty job, but one her son Ryan, 6, is eager to help with--she sends the money via PayPal to Walker and her husband, who have used it to pay for daily necessities, and this past weekend, to buy supplies to clean and repair their nearly unrecognizable home.
"It's been amazing," Bellia says. "It's really crazy, the way social media can be used to spread the word and help the people who need it."
Bellia says she'll continue to use Facebook to get back to the people who want to help, and to track Walker's home repair progress. She'll also keep collecting cans and bottles, and, once Walker's home has been repaired, and she and her husband are back on their feet, she'll donate the rest of the money to local fundraising efforts in hurricane-stricken areas.
For more information, or to donate your own empty cans and bottles to Harvey relief, find Stacy Bellia on Facebook at facebook.com/stacy.belliaedwards.
You can also donate $10 to the Red Cross's hurricane relief efforts by texting HARVEY to 90999.
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