Edgemere woman gathers goods for Hurricane Helene victims

First published Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024 in the Dundalk Eagle.

It all started with Stephanie Shaffer thinking that people needed some help in the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation in eastern Tennessee and North Carolina.

“I was helping a friend in need and I sent her 50 bucks and I was standing in Costco and I’m like ‘Oh my God.’ All these people are taking all this water and all this toilet paper because of the strike,” she said. “I’m like ‘great, wonderful. I need to do something else to help these people.’”

She looked at her husband, Frank, and asked him what she could do. He suggested posting a request for donations on Facebook.

So she did. She posted a message on the Edgemere Facebook page, asking for donations of backpacks, blankets, soap, deodorant, snacks, diapers and much more.

“Your generosity will directly support those affected by this disaster. Thank you for any help you can provide,” she wrote.

She was first planning to let people drop off donations at her house in Edgemere but realized that could make people suspicious. So she moved the donation site to the North Point-Edgemere Volunteer Fire Department.

Initially, she planned to go down to eastern Tennessee and North Carolina with just her pickup truck and its roughly six foot deep bed, she said. But then Baltimore-based Big Boy Transportation donated a truck and 53-foot trailer along with a driver.

And then the donations started piling in. Officially, she was only accepting donations from 1-4 p.m. on Friday. But people already started dropping donations off at 11 a.m., she said. 

Pam Wolfe, who works with the volunteer firefighters, urged Shaffer to contact the media.

“Don’t you think the media should be involved?” Wolfe said she asked Shaffer.

“She says, ‘No, we’re doing God’s work,’” Wolfe said.

We’re doing God’s work: That is Shaffer’s motto.

Word leaked out to the media anyway. Amber Lating, originally from the Carolinas, contacted WJZ. The TV station sent a cameraman out.

After several minutes of negotiations, Wolfe and Lating managed to convince Shaffer to be interviewed in front of the camera. Shaffer insisted on being surrounded by all the volunteers helping her, taking pains to emphasize that it was not her story — “this is everybody’s story,” she said.

“Without all of these people helping, all of this going on, this wouldn’t be happening,” Shaffer said. “The power of the people and the love and the generosity. This is what happens.”

Since her post, Shaffer, Wolfe and all the other volunteers have been handling a non-stop flood of donations. Not only are donations being dropped off, people are sending the team donations via Venmo.

Shaffer scribbled notes with phone numbers and instructions on envelopes and all other pieces of paper she could find Friday, trying to bring some organization to the chaos.

She’s able to handle it, though, because she knows what it’s like to be have a house flooded. Since moving to Edgemere a year ago, she said, her house has been flooded twice. Each time, about three to four feet of water stood around the house.

Her family has a farm in the hurricane’s path as well. 

Shaffer plans to drive down with all the donations on Sunday morning. She’s assembled a team to distribute donations across eastern Tennessee and North Carolina.

Each household requests supplies and the team will bring the items to them. They’re also going to visit and distribute aid in the rural areas that are hard to reach by on horseback, with trucks and with Polaris all-terrain vehicles that vaguely resemble their golf cart cousins but are meant for off-road adventures.

Shaffer’s philosophy is simple: Help out wherever she can.

Or, as she’d say it: “Put me in, coach!”