On a cool morning in September, Aimee Baker watched the doors bang shut on the back of a semi-truck bound for Houston.
Eight days before, she’d stared into the dark, empty hull of the 53-foot trailer and wondered what she’d gotten herself into.
Now the hardest part was over. Twenty-four thousand pounds of pet supplies were on their way to the Humane Society of North Texas from Wilderness.
Baker, 48, wasn’t quite done. She climbed into her Jeep, which she’d stocked with breakfast bars, peanut butter crackers, juice boxes and bottled water, and headed for the interstate. She drove all day and into the night, then slept in her Jeep in a gas station parking lot before continuing on to meet the semi-truck in Texas and help unload it.
By the time Baker returned home to Spotsylvania County, where she runs a pet-sitting business and works asset prevention at a Walmart store, she had been off work for two weeks. She took the time unpaid.
It was reward enough, she thought, that hundreds of animals displaced by Hurricane Harvey would be helped.
After a trio of powerful hurricanes devastated Texas, the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico, organizations across the Fredericksburg region did their part to help victims. Churches packed cleaning wipes and laundry detergent into “flood buckets” and hosted supply drives along busy roadways. People dropped off cases of diapers and canned food. They gave up nights and weekends and paychecks to collect donations and fill boxes. Ambulance drivers and electrical crews went into the thick of disaster zones.
They were motivated by the images they saw on social media and by their faith, by personal connections, past experiences and a phenomenon known as warm-glow giving—the good feeling you get when you help someone.
And while some entered bank account numbers from their computers, entrusting nonprofits on the ground to do the most good, others, like Baker, hit the ground themselves, going to extraordinary efforts to help strangers.
All had one thing in common: A desire to give. And whether they knew it or not, their deeds made them happier and healthier.
Even the smallest act of kindness can be good for you, said University of Mary Washington psychology professor Holly Schiffrin. Whether it’s opening a door for someone, volunteering weekly at a soup kitchen or driving a truck full of supplies to a city wrecked by wind and water, “research has shown benefits to physical and psychological well-being.”
No one knows for certain why. But those who study it have their ideas.
When you help someone, chances are you strengthen your relationship with that person. Relationships “are really strongly associated with being happier and healthier throughout your life,” Schiffrin said.
So is gratitude.
When you see someone who has lost everything, you’re more likely to be grateful for what you have, Schiffrin said.
“I also just think humans have this fundamental need to have a sense of purpose and feel like they’re contributing in a way that lives beyond themselves.”
FOR THE ANIMALS
As the floodwaters swelled in Houston, Baker watched as Walmart deployed more than 1,000 trucks filled with supplies and announced millions of dollars in relief.
“I thought to myself, the animals are also suffering,” Baker recalled.
With her adult son out of the house, Baker’s pets had become her children: three fox-terrier rescues and two cats, one of which her husband had nursed since kittenhood.
Her love for animals stretched all the way back to childhood, she said. She was raised on a farm and had once worked as a veterinarian technician in Florida. She’d earned a certification in Missouri to become an animal control officer, although she’d never gotten a job as one.
In May, she started Pet, Paws and Perks, a pet-sitting business in which she cared for everything from cats to goats in her spare time.
On Aug. 31, she hatched a plan: She’d email the Walmart corporate office and ask for use of a trailer for a pet supply drive. She’d man it for a week and give up her paycheck to help cover the cost of transporting it to Texas.
The worst that could happen, Baker thought, was that Walmart would tell her no.
Two days later, the trailer arrived at the Wilderness Walmart. The company would provide a driver and cover the transportation costs.
Baker announced her donation drive on Facebook and paid a few dollars to promote the post around the region. She sat with the truck for 12 to 14 hours a day and coordinated with 360 Farm and Pet, which offered to be another drop-off point for pet supplies. Friends stopped in to help. A group of Girl Scouts waved signs near the collection point.
Baker sorted, stacked and shrink-wrapped pallets of pet food, livestock feed, blankets, water, bleach, collars, carriers, leashes and pet medications—24 thousand pounds of it.
It was not the first time Baker had volunteered. She’d helped build a home for Habitat for Humanity, organized a poker run to benefit the Children’s Miracle Network and volunteered with the Boys and Girls Club. She tries to put in at least 25 hours to some cause every three months. Two years before, the Wilderness Walmart nominated her for the Community Hero Award.
If certain people are more wired to help others, as some psychologists suggest, then she is one of them.
University of Chicago economist John List writes that the desire to give is evolutionary, a trait found even in young children. He based his conclusion in part on a 2004 experiment in which preschoolers gave away a quarter of their marshmallows to other children who, they were told, weren’t getting any.
“One fact that has emerged across the globe is that people help others,” List writes.
Doing for others is often more satisfying than doing for oneself, said Schiffrin, the UMW psychology professor and co-author of “Balancing the Big Stuff: Finding Happiness in Work, Family and Life.”
She tells of one experiment in which people are given a certain amount of money and told to either spend on themselves, do something for another person or donate it.
“It absolutely found when you spend money on someone else, you’re happier for longer. It goes back to that warm glow. You feel good about yourself. You develop personally because of that,” Schiffrin said. “It’s an upward spiral. If you help someone, you’re happy. If you’re happy, you’re more likely to help.
“People think that ‘things’ make them happy, but the truth is that we habituate to new purchases pretty quickly,” she wrote in an email. “People aren’t very good at predicting what will make them happy, though.”
They might think the new iPhone will satisfy them, she said, and it might, briefly. But that soon wears off.
People “don’t realize that helping someone might have a longer lasting benefit.”
STEPPING UP
Nick Lopez, a 31-year-old father of two, knew a little bit about what it was like to lose everything. He’d once volunteered as an emergency responder for Stafford Fire and Rescue.
Now he is in business for himself, running Virginia Landscape Management. In late August, as he consumed news coverage of the disaster unfolding in Texas, he knew he had three things that could work to his advantage: a 12-foot box truck he used for landscaping, a wide social media following and a flexible boss.
Perhaps it was enough to make a difference, Lopez thought. Like Baker, he spread word of his plans on Facebook, and for several days, he parked at prominent locations around Stafford and accepted donations.
“The community came together like I’ve never seen,” he said. “It wouldn’t have been possible without them.”
The trailer filled, he stretched a tarp over it and, along with a friend, headed to the police station in Splendora, Texas, where he’d made a contact. The trip there and back covered some 2,700 miles and took three days. When one gas station in Columbia, La., saw what they were up to, the attendant told Lopez the fuel was on the house.
Lopez spent two hours riding through water-logged neighborhoods on a four-wheeler with a local. What he saw, he said, were “people’s lives sitting on a curb. They were cleaning out houses and waiting for FEMA and insurance adjusters to get there.”
Something struck him.
“One guy lost his house. He wasn’t even worried about himself. He was more worried about his neighbors. People were worried about people who couldn’t help themselves, even though they lost everything as well,” Lopez said.
“It opened up my eyes.”
After Harvey came Irma, then Maria in Puerto Rico.
The work is only in the beginning stages. But Lopez and a friend think they may have found a way to help those who lost their homes.
He’d like to ship sea crate containers to the island in the Caribbean that could be turned into temporary shelters.
“If I could find a way to do this,” Lopez said, “this is what I’d like to do.”
