Red Cross Worker Returns Home For Funerals and Gives Back to Her Community
This is an amazing story recorded by Christi Harlan, a Red Cross worker who has had the opportunity to talk to many American Samoa victims and volunteers. Christy had a chance recently to talk to Alofa Ofagalilo on the phone about her personal tragedy and what keeps her motivated to help people in American Samoa.
She lives thousands of miles away from her family, but she had to go back for the funerals—all of them. Her brother’s, her uncle’s, and all of the cousins from her mother’s side. Funerals for 13 members of her family—all killed in the tsunami that swept American Samoa and the neighboring nation of Samoa on the afternoon of Sept. 29.
She wept and shared memories and hugs with her surviving relatives. But after the funerals, when it was time to go home to Hawaii, she called her husband and child to say she wouldn’t be coming back yet. She had work to do.
So Alofa Ofagalilo, who has worked for the American Red Cross in Hawaii for five years, put on a red-and-white vest and joined the more than 300 Red Cross workers who have been on American Samoa for three weeks, bringing supplies and comfort to those who lost homes and family members in the waves.
“I’m seeing a lot of people in need,” said Ofagalilo. “The island is total mess. In some villages, people have been totally wiped out. But everybody is helping each other. They really uplift each other and anything you can do to help–shake their hand, hug them–it helps.”
See Alofa tell her story in her own words:
Filed under: Disaster Response
