You won’t get a more rewarding story today than this e-mail from Zephyr Salvo Studios' Brian Bearden (www.zsalvo.com).
I thought I would share this miracle that happened when I was volunteering at Reliant Hall on Thursday.
I volunteered on Thursday to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I went down there thinking that I was going to help write resumes for people searching for jobs. Instead, I ended up running the communication center for people searching for missing relatives. I spent the day helping people search national databases for their lost relatives and making sure they were listed as survivors.
A women named Sharon Webb sat down and had me search for her 13-year old son, Trayshawn. We had no luck, so I entered her name and her son's name in the national databases. This women's story stayed with me. She had been looking for her son since they were separated at the New Orleans Convention Center. The story she told was unbelievable.
In the early afternoon, I flagged down a CNN crew and told them Sharon's story. I used the PA system in Reliant Hall to call Sharon. Sharon came and gave her story to CNN. Since there was a chance that her story would go nationwide, I gave my personal cell phone number as her contact.
CNN did run her story. I had no idea the number of calls I would receive or what kind of calls, so I put all of my cell calls to voicemail.
At 3.30PM, I received a voice mail. The voicemail was from a women in Arkansas. I called the number back and it was Sharon's sister-in-law. She was at a FEMA-sponsored hotel and had seen the CNN broadcast. She knew where Sharon's son was and the story does not end...The sister-in-law was missing her two children. After paging Sharon for the second time, I used my phone to put them together. Sharon had her sister-in-law's two children with her in Reliant Hall.
Miracles do happen. Do your part to help the people affected by Hurricane Katrina.
P. S. If you know of someone who is missing and would like to use the national databases to find them, visit http://news.yahoo.com/katrinahelp. It lists most of the resources that are available.
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2 comments:
Thanks dad for this story, this evening in fact my friends and I were sitting around in the kitchen complaining about the governments inability to help in time for so many out there. It's nice to know that many people are doing what they can, as we are trying to figure out what we can do from here. It's so upsetting how everything has happened, and I hope that families can be reunited and rebuild lives after this tragedy.
After reading your profile, I think you were the perfect guy to run the communications system to reunite relatives. God bless you.
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