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" In the wake of a massive natural disaster, it can sometimes feel as if there&amp;#039;s nothing any one person can do for its survivors. But that&amp;#039;s definitely not the case. Learn how two women\u2014with no experience in disaster relief\u2014did their part to aid people who lived through Mother Nature&amp;#039;s worst.   Shopping for Free  When a neighbor called Rosalea Hostetler, 74, one day in May 2007 to tell her that an F5 tornado (the strongest kind) had leveled Greensburg, Kansas, a tiny community 95 miles from her hometown of Harper, she was devastated. The charming historic downtown she had once admired was gone. Her friends&amp;#039; antiques shop: destroyed. In fact, 90 percent of the buildings had been obliterated. &amp;quot;In Kansas, you grow up with the fear of tornadoes all your life. But when you first hear that a huge one has actually hit, it&amp;#039;s hard to process,&amp;quot; Rosalea says. &amp;quot;By the next morning my only thought was I have to do something.&amp;quot;   Upon learning from news reports that most of Greensburg&amp;#039;s 1,500 residents had survived with just the clothes on their back, Rosalea collected donations from friends and neighbors in Harper\u2014clothes and towels, toothbrushes and toilet paper, canned food and soap\u2014all in a matter of days. She loaded up the items and drove to Pratt, Kansas, a little town about 20 miles outside Greensburg where the tornado victims were being sheltered, and set up a &amp;quot;free store&amp;quot; on the grounds of a friend&amp;#039;s restaurant. &amp;quot;I knew that relief agencies and churches would be on site right away,&amp;quot; Rosalea says. &amp;quot;But I also knew that people needed to replace plenty of personal items, and standing in a long line to get them would feel overwhelming during a crisis.&amp;quot;   For three days, 150 tornado victims stopped at Rosalea&amp;#039;s makeshift freebies store, sharing their stories of survival, gathering things they needed\u2014and sometimes stumbling on an object of delight. &amp;quot;Somebody had donated a cute little pink tricycle,&amp;quot; remembers Rosalea, &amp;quot;and when this one little girl climbed on, it was hers in an instant! Watching that was pure joy. For a moment, it was almost as if everything had returned to normal.&amp;quot; To make a donation to help disaster victims, contact your local Red Cross. Go to RedCross.org to find a chapter near you.    Finding Man&amp;#039;s Best Friend With Hurricane Katrina hurtling into New Orleans, Stella Allen, 47, had no choice but to leave behind her two dogs, Lucky, a chow mix, and Mango, a golden retriever, when she was evacuated to a nearby motel. Once Lake Pontchartrain began spilling into her neighborhood, there was no way she could get back in. Despite frantic phone calls to the Humane Society, Stella wasn&amp;#039;t sure she&amp;#039;d ever see her beloved pets again. And she wasn&amp;#039;t alone: An estimated 600,000 animals were separated from their owners or died because of Hurricane Katrina.   That&amp;#039;s when Stealth Volunteers came to the rescue. The group was started in the days after Katrina by Marilyn Knapp Litt, 58, a retired website designer from San Antonio\u2014and dedicated dog and cat owner. &amp;quot;I realized that my online expertise could help track down the owners of lost pets scooped up in the wake of the hurricane,&amp;quot; she says. Marilyn recruited more than 1,000 volunteers via online postings, emails and word-of-mouth, and trained them in savvy cyber-detective work, like researching reverse phone directories, vet records, maps and online newspapers to match people with dogs and cats that had been scattered to shelters across the nation. Since then, Stealth Volunteers have arranged nearly 1,500 pet-owner reunions from Katrina and other disasters, including that of Stella and Lucky, who was tracked down at an animal shelter in Austin, Texas, after three weeks. (Mango was later located in Arizona by a different group.) The best part for Marilyn? Calling people with the good news. &amp;quot;One time, when I told a family that we&amp;#039;d found their dog, I could hear all the kids cheering in the background, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s Coco! It&amp;#039;s Coco!&amp;#039; I love that.&amp;quot; To volunteer or make a donation, go to .StealthVolunteers.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/real-women/a5243/real-stories-helping-natural-disaster-victims-112250/>