While conducting damage assessments in flood-stricken areas of Baltimore, Maryland, Team Rubicon volunteers arrived at the home of “Peaches,” as she returned home from “Survivor Soul Stroll 2018,” a walk for cancer survivors. The volunteers learned their arrival coincided with Peaches’ one-year anniversary of being cancer-free.
In addition to battling cancer, Peaches lost her husband to gun violence; suffered a period of lengthy unemployment during her medical treatment; cares for her mother, sister, niece, and nephew; and less than a month ago, experienced significant flooding in her home due to the recent storms in Baltimore.
While assessing the damage to Peaches’ home, the volunteers learned that her hot water heater was no longer working due to the flooding, requiring her family to take frigid showers and clean-up disaster debris with cold water.
The volunteers immediately identified and resolved the issue, providing Peaches and her family with hot water for the first time in two weeks. While Peaches celebrated this small victory—hugging and thanking the volunteers—they noticed that her washer and dryer was also rendered non-functional by the flooding. Aware that Peaches did not have the financial means to procure new appliances, the volunteers immediately contacted Team Rubicon’s Maryland State Leadership Team, volunteer leaders armed with local knowledge and relationships, to help find Peaches a new washer and dryer.
Volunteers, Peaches, and her nephew, Norman, gathered around the broken washer and dryer.
Chris Sherwood, a Maryland-based volunteer leader who had just arrived in Baltimore to support Team Rubicon’s operation, immediately answered the call to action. Chris turned his truck around to pick up a barely-used washer and dryer from his home that he no longer needed and headed straight to Peaches’ home.
The resourcefulness and selflessness of these volunteers helped restore the most basic of human comforts to a homeowner who has overcome incredible trials and tribulations.
