Offering Hurricane Victims Help, from Baseball Tickets to Chartered Airplanes

Voice of San Diego
By WILL CARLESS
Voice Staff Writer
Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2005

Ryan Lipkovicius of San Diego stormed around the lobby of Jimsair Aviation Services on Tuesday with the look of a man possessed.

His cell phone clamped to his ear, the 24-year-old home theater designer juggled calls from all over the country in an attempt to coordinate what has become a far-reaching relief effort based out of a stuffy hangar on the edge of Lindbergh Field airport.

Lipkovicius, who works for San Diego businessman David Perez, has found himself drafted into a recovery mission bankrolled by Perez that is growing daily in complexity.

That mission, which has had Perez shuttling to and from New Orleans since last Friday, is just an extreme example of hundreds of offers of help from San Diegans to aid those affected by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

The offers range from an e-mail offering a pair of extra Padres tickets to evacuees, to monetary contributions collected by the Salvation Army, to the multi-faceted effort being organized and funded by Perez.

At the Jimsair hangar, employees of Perez have ensconced themselves in the conference room, where they type away at laptops and scribble notes on pads of paper.

Lipkovicius said that Perez hopes to bring as many as 500 families from the devastated area to San Diego. Once here, he said, Perez will work with the Red Cross and other agencies to ensure the evacuees' basic needs are met. Lipkovicius said Perez plans to house them in local motels.

Lipkovicus said there were plans to bring 59 evacuees from New Orleans on Thursday. That figure was the maximum number, he said. The actual figure will depend on how many people take Perez up on the offer.

Gayle Falkenthal, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross in San Diego, said the organization has not been informed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of any more evacuees heading for San Diego. She said Perez's organization is working independently of Red Cross efforts.

In addition to ferrying people to San Diego, Perez has also been organizing an effort to collect and transport much-needed supplies to New Orleans and other areas affected by Katrina. Lipkovicius said private jets have been chartered to carry bottled water and other supplies. His team is also working on chartering cargo planes to transport a growing pile of diapers, water, canned goods and medical supplies to the affected areas.

A large portion of that pile arrived at the Jimsair hangar courtesy of a group of active-duty military men and women from Point Loma. Spurred on by the harrowing images on their television sets and driven by a patriotic sense of duty, the six couples decided to take the relief effort into their own hands.

"What I did was I went door to door and I asked my neighbors to come out," said 34-year-old Jamie Woods, a regional manager with Military Outreach Ministries. "So we all got together and we started collecting, we started probably about 10 a.m. yesterday morning and we didn't get done until about 9 p.m. last night."

Woods said she and her friends collected diapers, water and medical supplies. Any monetary donations were spent on additional medical supplies at a local Wal-Mart that they added to the stockpile. By the end of the day, the team had filled six SUVs with supplies. These goods were stored overnight in garages owned by the collectors and were driven to Jimsair on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday afternoon, the group was camped out in the hangar, fanning themselves, drinking water and watching television as they waited for an opportunity to offer up more help.

"There's nothing you can do that is too much," said Marine Cpl. Jon Massey, who returned from Iraq less than two weeks ago.

"We all have family down there, as Americans," said Shontelle Chavez, originally from Memphis, Tenn. "They don't have anything to eat, nothing to drink, babies are dying -- why wouldn't you help?"

Those sentiments were shared by Cheryl Dipmore of Rancho San Diego, who pulled into a donation collection point at the iPayOne Center (formerly the San Diego Sports Arena) on Tuesday morning. After folding a large bill into the collection bucket at the collection point, she tried to explain why she decided to donate.

"It's hard to describe," she said. "It just makes me feel good inside, to know that I can help."The collection, organized by Local 8 KFMB TV, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross, built on another collection organized by the office of San Diego Assemblyman Juan Vargas.

Supplies from that collection, which took place Monday at Petco Park, are currently in storage awaiting transportation to the affected areas. Financial donations from that collection had not yet been fully counted, but amounted to more than $50,000, according to Tanya Aldaz, a spokeswoman for Vargas.

Many San Diegans without the means to fly jets across the country or organize collections decided to reach out in whatever way they could.

San Diego International School has offered to help any students of independent French schools in New Orleans who have been left without a school. Classes will be provided tuition-free, said school principal André Bordes.

San Diego State University has offered to shelter evacuees should they arrive in the city. Gov. Schwarznegger announced at a press conference Tuesday that FEMA has contacted him and asked California to take 1,000 evacuees, 600 of whom may end up in San Diego.

Amie De Alba, a paralegal from San Diego, contacted the Voice to say that she and her fiancée had decided to postpone their wedding. However, she said, the couple must use their wedding site or they will lose their deposit. The solution, Ms. De Alba wrote in an e-mail, was simple:

"After I saw all of the devastation Hurricane Katrina has caused to hundreds and maybe even thousands of families," she wrote, "I thought we could host a fundraiser event that day at our wedding site."