“Paying It Forward”

Jeff Parness, like many New Yorkers, was always amazed by the love and support that the rest of the country showed New York City after 9/11.

Shortly after the devastating 2003 Southern California wild fires, Jeff found a perfect opportunity to give something back. When Jeff's 5 year-old son wanted to send his old toys to children in Southern California whose homes had been destroyed by fire, he offered to get a U-haul truck to deliver them across the country. After receiving nearly 100 volunteers and 1,000 emails from supporters, Jeff drove a U-Haul truck across the country that he eventually filled to the brim with supplies the fire victims would need.

Jeff tells us a little more about the trip:

An army recruiter we met in Pennsylvania gave us all the money he had on him— $4.77 —to help pay for gas for the trip. A hotel employee near Pittsburgh gave us a shovel to take to California as his way of saying "thank you" to his neighbors who had helped him after losing his own home in a flood a few years back. A convenience store clerk at the Jumpin Jimmy's Citgo in Montrose, Illinois bought $25 worth of toys from her own store with her own money and handed them to us to take to the children in California. And perhaps most touching of all, a hotel manager in Yuma, Arizona gave us his grandmother's comforter to take to California to literally provide some comfort for the survivors of the wildfires.

Shortly thereafter, New York Says Thank You was born. Today, Jeff and his team send hundreds of volunteers from New York to a different community around the country on the annual anniversary of 9/11. The New Yorkers pitch in with locals to help rebuild communities who are trying to recover from a natural or man-made disaster, just like New York was in 2001.