"Red Cross enabled me to sprint into action and not panic."

I have been a camp director for Our Kids Day Camp in Sullivan County, NY, for the past 14 years. We take our CPR renewal each year and although you hope to never use it, I had to when one of my counselors brought in another staff member who was choking. This boy could not breathe because he had a Dum Dum lollipop stuck in the back of his throat. I grabbed him, bent him over and gave back blows—and the lollipop came flying out. Afterward, it did sink in that this boy could have died, but the training I had year after year with the Red Cross enabled me to sprint into action and not panic. Thanks!

–Helen Hoffman, Woodbourne

"Students were deeply touched by the Red Cross."

I participated in a Red Cross outreach event at Queens College. This event gave me an opportunity to explain to students about the services provided by the Red Cross. I also had an opportunity to observe how people see the Red Cross and their desire to get involved in this humanitarian organization. Students exploring new possibilities expressed a desire to travel and serve people in other geographic areas. Some students expressed a desire to become volunteers, to get training, and to take courses related to helping others in crisis situations. I realized that they were deeply touched by the Red Cross and were willing to commit themselves to the service of humanity.

–Mauricio Forero, New York, NY

“It’s the little things you don’t think about that are crucial to moving forward."

Luis Avila knows all about responding to emergencies—for nine years he worked for the American Red Cross in Greater New York. Starting as a volunteer, he came to wear many hats at the Chapter: 9/11 responder, Assistant Director of Operations, Disaster Capital Initiative Project Manager and ultimately, Director of Mass Care. In 2006 Luis left the NY Red Cross to become Regional Emergency Services Officer at the Greater Miami & The Keys Chapter of the American Red Cross.

Then, on February 4, 2010, Luis learned firsthand how it feels to receive help from the Red Cross. That day his parents’ home in Corona, Queens was destroyed in a fire. They had lived in the house for 28 years, and Luis had lived there too. After receiving a call from his father, Luis booked a flight to New York. By the time he arrived that same evening, Red Cross responders from his old Chapter had provided Luis’ parents with temporary housing and emergency funds for food and clothing.

Luis got to see how a little help in those first traumatic moments after a disaster makes a big difference. “Their credit cards were burned. They had nothing," Luis said. "My mom—she needed comfort; she needed to get some makeup, a hairbrush, gloves and underwear. It’s the little things you don’t think about that are crucial to moving forward." He added, "My mom loved the sneakers they gave her. She’s still wearing them."

After experiencing this role reversal Luis says, “Being a client was an opportunity to really see how a little bit helps. There are things I can see now, some things I think we can do differently at the Miami Red Cross. They’re not going to be more expensive—some more toiletries—but it may benefit the clients a little more. We don’t give out shoes, but now, having seen my mom wear the sneakers she was given, I have a different perspective."

“I never knew Red Cross helped at emergencies this small.”

Charmaine Berry was at work when a fire broke out on her street in Jamaica, Queens, and spread to her home. Her daughter, Tenisha, called to say their house was on fire. “I thought she was joking,” said Charmaine, who left work and raced home. When she arrived, she discovered that the Red Cross was already at the scene, and that she was unable to go back into her home of 16 years because of water damage from putting out the fire.

“A man from Red Cross saw that I was getting agitated,” she said. “He took my blood pressure and calmed me down. Red Cross took care of us—they put us up in a room, gave us some money for clothing.” Tenisha broke in to remind her mother that “The Red Cross also fed us that day. They gave us hot chocolate and cookies and water.”

Charmaine said, “I’ve always thought highly of the Red Cross. But I never knew Red Cross helped at emergencies this small. Now I think even more highly of them. I knew I was going to get through this, but at that moment, I didn’t know where to turn and they were there to assist us.”

–Charmaine Berry, Jamica, Queens

“We called him John Doe.”

Marie-Ange Tribié was not a Red Cross volunteer before the earthquake in Haiti. But when she learned from her nephew-in-law in Miami that the Red Cross was recruiting volunteer translators to go to Haiti, she signed on immediately.

She trained for a day at Chapter headquarters in Manhattan and was on her way two days later. Before leaving, Marie-Ange presciently said, “Translation is the assignment, but we know before going that we’ll be doing more. They need our comfort, our empathy. That’s where the human touch comes in. That is going to make a big difference in these people’s lives.”

On the Navy hospital ship Comfort Marie-Ange worked in a 58-bed ward filled with sick and injured children. “We called him John Doe,” Marie says of the little boy from a destroyed orphanage in Port-au-Prince who had been dropped off at a hospital in the capital by a motorcycle driver and sent to the ship by an onshore doctor. He was suffering from a skin disease that covered his emaciated body and had invaded his eye, and he was severely traumatized from the earthquake and its chaotic aftermath.

On the ship John drank nothing, and, at first, ate only graham crackers. His legs were like jelly; he would just fall down if one tried to make him stand. He did not speak. He screamed and cried constantly. He was so difficult that for a while he required sedation.

Noticing a few days later that little John Doe seemed responsive to soothing and holding, Marie-Ange volunteered to care for him and spent hours caressing, stroking and speaking to him. Since he couldn’t stand, she just sat and held him. Slowly he began to eat more and, after two weeks, he was eating, walking, jumping up and down, smiling from time to time, even kissing and hugging a stuffed bear. The same John who most of the kids were afraid of when he arrived onboard, became loved and cared for by all.

But John Doe never really talked. He did, however, curse—in Creole. Gently but firmly Marie-Ange weaned him from this habit. One day he went to help himself to the milk he knew was kept in a certain refrigerator. He cursed at the nurse who stopped him. Marie-Ange told him, “No cursing. When you want something, ask for it.” And he took the nurse’s hand and put it on the fridge.

“He was such a success story that everybody on the ship came to see him, even the captain and two visiting admirals,” said Marie-Ange. “But all he really needed was some love.”

Marie-Ange Tribié lives in Wilmington, North Carolina and was in Queens when the earthquake in Haiti occurred. Following her introductory volunteer mission with the Red Cross, she plans to continue as a volunteer and take advantage of Red Cross training courses. Marie-Ange reports that following an operation performed on the hospital ship, John Doe was transferred to an orphanage in Haiti operated by Mission of Hope. She never learned his real name.

“We became their mothers, brothers, sisters, counselors.”

As soon as Sherri Casting heard about the earthquake in Haiti, she wanted to volunteer immediately. She learned via a friend’s Facebook page that the Red Cross needed translators. A few phone calls later Sherri was enrolled in a special volunteer program for Creole speakers who would serve as translators for Haitian patients being treated by Navy doctors on the 1,000-bed hospital ship, Comfort.

After a one-day training course Sherri flew from Florida to Guantanamo, then to Port-au-Prince by cargo plane and from there by helicopter to the hospital ship located off the coast of the Haitian capital for a 30-day stint as a translator. “As soon as we got on the ship and saw the patients, we knew we couldn’t just sit around and translate. We became mothers, brothers, sisters, counselors to the patients. We wanted to be part of their rehabilitation,” Sherri reported.

On the Comfort, Sherri worked in a limited-care ward where the patients weren’t so critically injured. She says that she mostly listened, prayed and talked with them. One patient Sherri especially remembers was a young 19-year-old boy, an artist, whose name was “Lucky Star.” He had been at home on the day of the earthquake because he wasn’t feeling well. He was lying in bed when the ceiling fell on him, breaking his pelvis and tearing his bladder. Lucky Star impressed Sherri, because even after all he’d been through, he was so positive. She told herself, “I can’t let myself be down when here’s this fellow with nothing and he’s always smiling.”

Sherri Casting, 25, was born in Brooklyn but raised in Pétionville, Haiti, until the age of 17. Now a full-time student majoring in forensic psychology at John Jay College, Sherri last visited the country in 2005. Her relatives in Haiti, riding in a car far from Port-au-Prince, felt the severe shaking of the earthquake, but suffered no harm. The school Sherri attended in Port-au-Prince was destroyed by the earthquake.

“The Red Cross has done a good job in Haiti and in New York.”

When the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jean Cherizer Franguel, his wife, and their 14-month-old daughter escaped unharmed from their home just before it collapsed. For the next three days, having no other recourse, they slept outside. Then, a friend suggested that because their daughter had been born in New York City and was therefore a citizen, Jean should bring his family to the United States.

After consulting with the American consulate, Jean’s wife and daughter traveled together to New York on a US Navy plane; Jean traveled separately and reunited with them here. Remembering the support the Red Cross provided in Haiti after the earthquake, Jean sought help for his family too. At Chapter headquarters in Manhattan, they were given emergency funds for food and clothing. Through a translator, Jean said, “The Red Cross has done a good job in Haiti and in New York."

–Jean Cherizer Franguel