Our Impact

Linda has called Poplar Bluff home for 20 years. As a caregiver at a local nursing home, she shared, “You get attached to everybody you take care of, they’re family.”

But when a devastating tornado ripped through her community, Linda faced a different kind of caregiving—one for her own family.

Referring to her son Linda said, “I called him and asked if he was in the basement and he said yeah. Then he called me back crying, not even ten minutes later. He lost both his vehicles. They had a tree that came down onto their garage, lost all their trees in the backyard. He has insurance, but he doesn’t have $4,000 they want for a deductible. And I try to help him out as much as I can, you know? If you were to look as his cars, you would cry for him, you know?”

Linda spoke of that night saying, “He’s my baby, it doesn’t matter how old he is. I tried to get to his house and there was no possible way to get to his house. Ambulances were trying to get through. They couldn’t get through. Fire trucks were trying to get through. I mean, it was bad, chaos.”

Linda’s son and his three children, including two friends over for a sleepover, were huddled in the basement as trees crashed down around them. All made it out with no injuries, but the same couldn’t be said for her sons home or vehicles.

Like many others in her community, Linda turned to a SEMO Food Bank mobile food pantry at her local church for relief in such difficult times.

“People in the community are just all coming together. You know, helping one another,” she said, “People need food.”