Marine rookie and fiancee organize fundraiser for Hurricane Helene victims

SEATTLE — Sailors are stepping up to help those affected by this terrible situation in any way they can.

Last week we told you about the star destroyer. Cal Raleigh’s fundraising efforts for Hurricane Helene.

The effort raised $10,000 in donations from Washington state alone to the North Carolina Community Foundation, the Marines told us. But the area of ​​destruction is extensive, in a region ill-equipped to handle the effects of rare, devastating inland hurricanes.

And this is affecting the family of another Mariners star. Rookie outfielder Ryan Bliss is engaged to his longtime girlfriend Katelynn Hadjopoulos, who is originally from Greeneville, Tennessee.

The couple met while Ryan was playing baseball at Auburn and Katelynn was in school at the University of Tennessee. This couple has deep ties to that region. So, along with Greeneville, a rural farming community devastated by Hurricane Helene, Ryan and Katelynn took action.

“It’s just a shock,” Katelynn said.

“You see people. You don’t know where to start. And I think that’s the hardest thing because my hometown is so small, we’re agriculture-friendly. And that’s why we make a living off our farmland. That’s how the majority of people in my hometown get their income, and so they don’t even have their income anymore. They don’t even have farmland to go to.” So I think right now it’s a river, the hardest things are being able to sit there and see, this is where I grew up and seeing it all happen this way and a lot of people don’t have flood insurance, which is another thing that’s really devastating for people at this point. “We see that he is actually homeless,” he added.

A double whammy for this effort. The GoFundMe Page, which has a goal of $10,000, is trying to help in any way possible.Donations and of course messages of support are coming in from Mariners fans.

“This is very important to us,” Bliss told me. “Constant support, not just because they’re fans of the Seattle Mariners, but because they have a heart. I think that’s the one thing we can say that we love Seattle. Since we’ve been there, we’ve seen that: We see how the fans treat the players, they really love the sport, and like I said, they just “We see that their support not only on the field but also off the field is important to us. We cannot thank you enough for helping us.”

While news coverage has diminished in the days and weeks following the hurricane’s devastation, work continues to be a struggle for those living in needy areas. Making efforts like Ryan and Katelynn’s that much more important.

“I think they got running water about a week ago, but they didn’t have water for two and a half, three weeks,” Bliss says. They were teaching people in town how to boil it and you put it in the toilet, take it. “They were teaching people how to survive,” Bliss said.

“They were stuck there. The only way to reach people was by air,” Katelynn said of residents stranded in the mountainous areas.

It’s a terrible situation, but some shred or positivity came out of it. These Mariners players, whether it’s Raleigh or Bliss and his family, show us that sports “heroes” are one thing, but helping people in the real world using the baseball platform in this way? That’s everything.

“I think that’s why we do it. We actually do it for the love of the game, but we also do it to give back and use our platform to help others.”

Well said, Bliss.

You can check out more of what the couple had to say.video.