Publication Date: Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Our Town: Pancakes for Katrina
Our Town: Pancakes for Katrina
(September 21, 2005) by Don Kazak
There are times when running out of food can be a good thing, as when 200 people are expected for breakfast and 400 show up.
That's what happened to Kelly McMeekin and Annie Valles a week ago Sunday. The two eighth graders from Egan Junior High School in Los Altos had organized a pancake breakfast to raise money for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
Safeway, Andronico's and Costco donated the food, Peet's the coffee and Kinko's printed up the flyers for free. Palo Alto firefighters cooked the pancakes and the Palo Alto Elk's Lodge provided the kitchen and eating area.
Then they ran out of pancake mix. So they went out and bought some more.
The two 13-year-olds got the idea a week earlier when Annie was over at Kelly's house having dinner. The two best friends are always at each other's houses since they live a half-block apart (though Kelly lives in Palo Alto and Annie in Mountain View).
Kelly's mom, Caroline Judy, was cooking corn-meal pancakes that night. And watching her pour maple syrup, Annie suddenly shouted, "Pancake breakfast!"
"Everyone knew what Annie meant," Kelly said.
Then came the hard work of putting the benefit breakfast together on short notice.
They raised more than $2,000 for the Red Cross as of last week -- people are still giving them money.
The two girls, who smile easily and finish each other's sentences, have never done anything like this before.
"We just wanted to do something to help," Annie said.
"People say, 'That's terrible,' but they don't do anything to help," Kelly said.
"It feels so surreal," Annie said. "I never thought I could do something like this."
Collecting money for the Red Cross ($5 a head for the pancakes) "makes it more real," Annie said of the Katrina disaster. It even got her watching the news. "But at some point it's hard to watch the news because it's so sad. As you get older, you begin to get more attached to things like that."
"What if something happened here?" Kelly asks. "If there was an earthquake here, Palo Alto and Los Altos wouldn't be getting help. So I'd want people to help us."
Kelly and Annie pitched in and did their part for people they don't know because it was the right thing to do. Thousands of others have, too. As of Friday, the Palo Alto chapter of the American Red Cross had collected $596,000, with more still pouring in, according to Executive Director Trish Bubenik.
Others are helping in a more direct way. The Palo Alto Red Cross has sent 25 volunteers to the hurricane-ravaged area with 10 more waiting to go. Separately, Dr. Sarah Beekley of Palo Alto left for Houston last week to work in a free clinic treating hurricane survivors. Beekley works at Kaiser Permanente (she also volunteered during last year's Asian tsunami relief efforts).
Reaction to the Katrina disaster has filled the news for the last three weeks, with much finger pointing.
"The 'blame game' phrase has been used a thousand times," Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, said. "I was offended by the term. It is not a game. People died. This is about responsibility." Sitting in her Palo Alto district office, Eshoo pauses to wipe tears from her eyes.
"The overarching emotion is that we are aghast and we are sad that something like this could happen to our fellow citizens," Eshoo said of her colleagues in Congress.
FEMA "failed miserably" because the Bush administration "gutted it" and put an amateur in charge, she said. "That's the part that's so sad. It didn't have to be that way."
Members of Congress were shaken badly by the crisis.
"My colleagues are saying, 'What's happening to us?'" Eshoo said. "This is a horror movie playing in front of us."
Referring to 9/11 four years ago, Eshoo said, "This is another psychological blow to the country to see our fellow citizens floating face down. This doesn't fit our national character."
But a simple pancake breakfast tirelessly organized by two 13-year-old girls helps define that national character, too.
Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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