EVERETT – A week ago, Charlie Hargrove couldn’t find Sri Lanka on a map. Today, he flies there.
Reading the news the morning after Christmas, the Lake Stevens man was startled by the scenes of devastation in South Asia and Africa wreaked by the Indian Ocean tsunamis.
Hargrove doesn’t speak a foreign language, only “English and pig Latin,” he jokes. He doesn’t have formal medical or disaster training. He didn’t even have a passport.
| To help fund Charlie Hargrove’s tsunami relief mission, donate to the Northside Church of God, 2532 Virginia Ave., Everett, 98201 or call 425-252-1032.
Include your e-mail address if you’d like updates on Hargrove’s trip. After his expenses, the money collected will be donated to the people of South and Southeast Asia. |
Mere details.
By that evening, Hargrove – who could easily be mistaken for the late NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt – was planning a relief trip to Colombo, Sri Lanka.
“I really felt just a total need to go there and help,” he said.
A self-employed contractor who calls himself “a jack of some trades,” Hargrove plans to stay up to a month in Sri Lanka, pitching in wherever needed.
“I just feel so blessed that we’re in a position right now that I can go,” he said. “Most people would like to have an opportunity to go help.”
Hargrove hoped to join the American Red Cross’s tsunami relief effort, but he isn’t certified to do so. The agency is only deploying its most experienced volunteers to south and southeast Asia, said Chuck Morrison, executive director of the Snohomish County Chapter of the American Red Cross.
“The folks that Red Cross sends to these disasters have been trained for many years … to prepare for the magnitude of what they’ll see now,” he said.
Morrison has spoken with Hargrove and admires his determination.
“I really appreciate the initiative and the drive. He’s just ready to go, and what a wonderful thing to do, to drop everything and go take care of some folks with huge needs,” Morrison said. “With as much determination as was evident when we talked, he will find a way to be of tremendous help.”
Hargrove and his family will help finance as much of the trip as they can, but the price of the airline ticket alone was almost $1,400. He called some of the small business owners he has worked with, who immediately contributed more than $4,000.
Hargrove is being sponsored by Everett’s Northside Church of God, which is accepting donations for his relief mission. After his trip is paid for, the remainder of the donations will go toward helping the people he meets in Sri Lanka, he said.
“Every penny will go to the betterment of these people,” Hargrove said.
Miraculously, with a five-page to-do list and the help of his wife and daughter, he managed in four days to prepare for a trip that would normally have taken weeks to arrange.
He got his birth certificate certified, a passport, immunization shots and pills to prevent malaria and cholera.
Hargrove was told he would have to wait a week to get his shots, but when nurses at the Snohomish Health District found out why he was in a rush to get vaccinated, they worked their lunch hours to help him, he said.
“That’s the way every step of this thing has gone,” he said. “To me, it’s just an indication that, yes, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Hargrove filled a backpack with the basics, including a tent, a sleeping bag, insect repellent, face masks, rubber gloves, candles and a water purifier.
He still doesn’t know what he’ll be eating or where he’ll be staying, but again – mere details.
“I feel like I’m prepared as a person could be,” he said.
His wife, Rhonda, is worried.
“It’s just the unknowns,” she said. “It’s the other side of the world. But I think it’s neat, too.”
They bought a couple of international phone cards – $10 for six minutes from Sri Lanka – but she likely won’t hear much from her husband for several weeks.
His daughter, Joleen Runnels, 23, who became his trip organizer, said more than his safety, she is concerned about what her father might encounter.
“My biggest worry is after putting babies in a mass grave, how do you come home?” she said with tears in her eyes.
It’s going to take an unparalleled amount of giving from the world community to help the affected countries recover from the disaster, Hargrove said.
“And when (that giving) gets to the other end, there’s got to be somebody to do something with it. I feel like that’s gonna be me.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
