How a Hurricane Katrina victim is helping the smallest survivors of the Texas floods

CNN

2 days ago

Most people don't expect Mimi Hymel to remember Hurricane Katrina. After all, she was only 3 when the Category 5 storm slammed into her Louisiana home in 2005.
But nearly 20 years later, as Hymel watched news of the floodwaters inundating Texas Hill Country and saw the harrowing images of destruction from Camp Mystic, she said those memories came back with sharp clarity.
She can still recall the moment her family decided they couldn't ride out Katrina and the sinking feeling she felt as her mom placed Hymel and her sister in their car and drove away, leaving their dad behind to work at a nearby hospital.
But most of all, Hymel said, she remembers how she struggled to fall asleep for days after they escaped the storm because she didn't have her favorite stuffed animal.
'I just had no idea if my dad was OK or even coming home at all,' she recalled. 'I had a teddy bear named Cuddles that I didn't get to take in the car with me. In a scary time like that, I really wanted it for comfort.'
Indeed, the importance of these plush companions was apparent as the floodwaters began seeping through the Chatterbox cabin at Camp Mystic, prompting a 9-year-old to offer her top bunk as a safe place for campers to store their stuffies during the storm.
Hymel said the trauma of escaping a natural disaster has a way of changing you.
But all these years later, she's found a way of channeling her experience during Katrina into helping today's youngest survivors.
In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Hymel said there was no shortage of local organizations and kind neighbors who tried to meet her family's immediate needs for food, clothes and shelter.
But as a child, she said she struggled to process such dramatic and rapid change.
'When we finally did get back to our house, everything was destroyed,' she recalled.
And Cuddles had been lost to the floodwaters.
Studies have long shown blankets or stuffed animals can help children adapt to unfamiliar or distressing situations and they become even more important when a child is processing grief.
Although the family ultimately resettled in Texas, as she grew older, Hymel said she noticed how some first responders or families would share photos of stuffed animals they recovered after a disaster.
'I was once that child so it's always just emotional seeing those photos,' she said. 'I realized that kids experience disasters a little bit differently, so relief needs to work a little differently for them too.'
That realization sparked Hymel to mobilize after catastrophes, coordinating with local businesses to host donation drives for stuffies and then partnering with first responders and other organizations to help distribute the plush toys in the aftermath of a tragedy.
After the success of her early donation efforts, Hymel founded Comfort Bears in a Catastrophe. The nonprofit not only provides kids with a new stuffed animal after a crisis, but they also connect families to mental health resources.
Each stuffed animal is tagged with a card offering free crisis counseling through the national Disaster Distress Helpline, which offers children and their families help navigating traumatic events.
As interest in her work grew, so did the need. From the Miami Surfside condo collapse to the destructive fires in Maui and Los Angeles and countless floods and tornadoes, these days the steady drumbeat of disasters has been relentless, Hymel said.
And so far, the nonprofit has donated more than 50,000 stuffed animals to children in need, Hymel said.
She has also written a series of children's books called 'Miss Prepared and Captain Ready.'
'It teaches them important skills to know if a disaster were to hit, but it also encourages kids to get involved in their own way,' she said.
But nothing, Hymel added, can compare to the joy of seeing a child receive a new stuffed animal and finding a sense of comfort in the midst of a crisis.
'After Hurricane Ian, I was able to donate to the hospital I was actually born in,' Hymel said. 'That was just kind of full circle.'
From her home in Houston earlier this month, Annie Gully and her daughter watched as reports of flooding in the Texas Hill Country grew more dire by the hour.
A close friend, she later learned, lost her niece, 8-year-old Blakely McCrory, in the floodwaters at Camp Mystic.
'It's just unfathomable to even wrap your head around something like this happening,' she said. 'You kind of have to go through the sadness and then you're like, 'OK, what can we do to help.''
Gully, who owns Tree House Arts and Crafts, a local children's art studio, said over the years she's seen how a child's favorite stuffed animal can become like a family member.
So, when her daughter suggested a donation drive for kids, she leaped at the idea. She reached out to Comfort Bears on social media and within hours they had a game plan.
Gully's donation drive was covered on the local news and 'that day alone, I think we collected 600' stuffed animals, she said.
After three days they received more than 1,100 donations to be distributed throughout the state.
'Children don't really have an outlet to help' after a crisis, Gully said. 'You could tell their parents had explained to them that other kids have lost their lovies and how sad would it be if you lost your(s).'
Gully is also selling 'Mystic Strong' artwork, and the proceeds will be donated to charity in honor of McCrory and the other lives lost at Camp Mystic.
'I feel like every time you turn on the news, there's just something worse that you hear about,' Gully said.
But, she added, watching her community come together to donate comfort to the smallest victims of the floods in Kerr County has given her a reason to hope.
'No one cares who you are, what you look like or who you voted for,' she said, 'We're all just doing things together to help.'