Michelle Albert visited New York City for the first time last weekend. Like most tourists, she got lost on the subway and ate giant sandwiches, but she wasn’t just there to sightsee: She spent most of her time aiding Hurricane Sandy victims.
The 19-year-old public relations UF sophomore rode 17 hours on a bus with 39 other students and two staff members on a relief trip sponsored by UF Hillel in partnership with the Columbia/Barnard Hillel in New York.
The group worked in Rockaway Beach in Queens.
The bus left Thursday afternoon and arrived in New York on Friday, said UF Hillel staff member Melissa Stern.
The area was “eerie,” she said. Houses were vacant, health officials were driving around to give people air filter masks and fire trucks were in the middle of the streets, Stern said.
Inside the houses, there were watermarks higher than Stern’s head. She is 5 feet 3 inches tall.
The group mostly tore down parts of houses, like drywall and decks, that were too water-damaged to stay standing, she said.
In the two days the UF Hillel group was there, a lot was accomplished.
“A lot of families said that we got so much done in one day that all of that would have taken them more than two weeks,” she said.
Stern spoke of a few families who had sons who were all friends.
The guys told all of the students that in a few months, when everything’s better, they’d take them around Rockaway Beach and let them stay at their houses.
“They were offering anything they could to show their gratitude,” she said.
Stern said she never thought that she’d have the opportunity to staff a trip like this. UF Hillel received such a positive response from students that it hopes to sponsor other volunteer visits in the future, she said.
For Albert, putting faces to the Hurricane Sandy damage had the most impact.
“They’re just resilient, and having that image in the back of my mind makes me grateful for all I have,” she said.
It also changed how Albert thinks about charity work.
“They don’t need our pity,” she said. “They need us to come alongside them and help them.”
On the second day, Albert said she and some friends were tearing out insulation with a man named Vincent and his wife.
At the end of the day, to show gratitude for their help, Vincent went out and bought them the “best eggplant and chicken Parmesan sandwiches on the island,” she said.
“And we just sat on his porch for an hour and a half and ate and talked to him,” Albert said. “He felt so blessed and honored that these people from South Florida would come help him.”
Columbia/Barnard Hillel Executive Director Brian Cohen felt similarly.
“This is an unbelievable thing that the students did,” Cohen wrote in an email.
“To come up here and spend so much time on the bus — to volunteer for two days — they really did help those in need.”
Contact Kathryn Varn at kvarn@alligator.org.
