UVa student aims to help islanders hit by tidal wave

A Charlottesville native is hoping to raise money to send much-needed medical supplies and clothing to those affected last week by the tsunami that devastated Samoa and neighboring islands.

Laura Hanks, a post baccalaureate pre-medical student at the University of Virginia, said she needs approximately $1,000 to send donated supplies to Peace Corps workers in Samoa.

Hanks, 26, spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer on the Samoan island of Upolu and said it is where she found her calling to be a doctor. But last week, she realized the need in the western Samoan island was great.

“I was sitting in class when I got a text from a friend [saying] there had been an earthquake,” Hanks said. “I instantly thought tsunami.”

A quick check on her iPhone showed Hanks the island had indeed been devastated by a tsunami that stuck Sept. 28 after an 8.3-magnitude earthquake. The people who lived in Tafatafa, where Hanks worked, were spared, but the nearby village of Poutasi was destroyed and people were killed.

“I wanted to do something to help,” Hanks said.

So Hanks sent out word on Facebook, and asked her UVa friends to help collect items. She contacted the Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory program at UVa about donating medical supplies.

MERCI collects the hospital’s unused and sterile medical supplies and donates them to various projects and charitable missions.

Now that she has collected boxes of supplies, Hanks needs the money to mail the packages to Peace Corps friends in Samoa. Postage is expensive and can be up to $50 per box, she said.

“I hope to send the first boxes this week after I get them together,” Hanks said.

A total of 178 people have been confirmed dead in Samoa, American Samoa and islands in the northernmost islands of Tonga, according to an Associated Press story on Tuesday.

Nearly a week after the disaster, hundreds of Samoans remain huddled in the hills above the coast, the AP said. Two of the island’s three hospitals were heavily damaged, Hanks said.

Hanks learned her friend Erica Wales ran down the streets of Salesatele after she received news that an earthquake had hit and looked outside her beachfront home to see coral reef where water should be.

“She told people to run for the hills just as a large wave came in and destroyed her house,” Hanks said.

During her time in Tafatafa, where Hanks worked as a special education teacher, she also organized two medical clinics for village residents. Her dad, John Hanks, chief of general surgery at UVa Medical Center, volunteered his time and medical talent to help at both clinics.

“The first year I didn’t know what to expect and there was a line out the door,” John Hanks said. The doctor, along with Peace Corps and medical volunteers, did a general check-up on the people who attended the clinics.

“After doing [the clinics] I decided this is what I was meant to do,” Laura Hanks said.

Although she doesn’t know what type of medicine she wants to study, Hanks said she believes she’ll return to Tafatafa one day. When she left the small village, several “Virginia is for Lovers” and “Bodo’s Bagels” shirts stayed behind.

Hanks, who wrote a blog about her two-year adventure in Samoa, returned last November. In her final blog entry, she described her thoughts on what the time there meant to her.

“[The Samoan children] showed me how to take joy in the little things in life and laugh at my mistakes,” Hanks wrote. “Who knows if I’m any wiser, but I’m definitely older.”

John Hanks said he is open to a return trip to Tafatafa if there was a need for his services. In the meantime, he’s helping his daughter raise money to ship supplies to help the people they met there.

“A lot of times, people worry that with a third-world country you send your money and it’s just gone but that isn’t the case here,” John Hanks said. “These are people we share the planet with and we can help them through this disaster.”