Organizer: “These People Are Suffering.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WOLO) — “Just absolute panic, we never had anything like this the entire time I lived there,” says Kim Rich Kim Rich, now a Columbia resident who says she loves to serve, grew up in New Jersey. The images coming from the Northeast after Hurricane Sandy and now the Nor’easter are, for her, heartbreaking. “These people are suffering, we have to get together and make this happen,” says Rich. Shey says the stories from her friends still living there are also hard. “I tell you, getting a phone call in the middle of the night on the storm night, my friends calling me, the water is up to my windows, I’m scared,” says Rich. But instead of Just listening and watching what she calls devastating media reports, Rich decided to Act. “God is tugging at my heart and all my friends and everyone I talked to, we want to make a difference,” says Rich. Especially after his phone call from a friend. “Amy says Kim, these people are suffering they’re cold, there’s no coats, there’s nothing they lost everything,” says Rich. So she’s working to get those affected, coats. Already, tons of local partnerships have poured in, but now she needs your help. “When they get these coats they will know just that someone loves them somewhere. Let God’s love shine through us,” says Rich. Once all of the coats are collected they will be distributed to the hardest hit areas. For Rich this drive is a way for her, and those like her, to help family, childhood friends even complete strangers from hundreds of miles away. “People here will know what it’s really like to care, to go into their closet and take something that’s personally theirs that they know will just totally make an impact on the person. When they get they coat, when they put it on they are just going to feel the love you are sending to them,” says Rich. The Carolina Cares: Coats, Hats & Gloves Drive will be held November 16, 2012. Drop-off locations are as follows: Richland & Lexington Counties: Lexington Chick-fil-A, Chick-fil-A on Two Notch Rd., Capital City Ambulance 2405 Two Notch Rd, Officer Depot on Two Notch Rd. Sumter County: Chik-fil-A of Sumter Mall Kershaw County: Lugoff Ford, Belk of Camden, Carolina Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram.