When Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast at the end of September, leaving many without power, Sabrina Peterson knew she wanted to help people out. After witnessing one of her friends, Jay Webb, making and passing out free meals she had an idea of how she could help.
“I was thinking about doing something since the storm and I didn’t know how to go about it but Jay had something. He was at the IGA [in Pelion],” Peterson said. “You know what, I’m going to go for it. I just want to give back to the community.”
Peterson said she was fortunate to have her electricity recover quickly but she realized that there were many others whose power was still out. According to Dominion Energy statistics listed on their website, outages peaked when more than 380,000 customers were without power. This doesn’t include customers of Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative and other companies. 
So Peterson just did her thing. 
She lives in Lexington County and she grew up in Pelion, so she started there. On Oct. 2, she prepared 100 spaghetti dishes to hand out to anyone and everyone at the Shumpert’s IGA in Pelion. All of the plates minus one were received by the community.
“I was out there for four hours and people came as they could,” Peterson said, saying she wished she had more plates because people messaged her asking if there were any leftover plates.
However, she made another batch of meals she passed out to about 20 families in Leesville, Pelion and Lexington areas. 
Having worked in the restaurant business gave her the experience and preparation of preparing food. As for serving people, she just followed her heart. 
“I started off helping because I saw others help and I volunteered with them and gathered up the courage to finally go out and do it myself. I posted in groups [on Facebook] to see who might need food or other supplies,” she said.
Even with limited supplies and resources herself, she didn’t let that stop her from helping. She also didn’t let pride get in the way of asking for help or donations to help serve.
It doesn’t take much to get up and go serve. She even says it can be as simple as looking in your pantry and donating non-expired, non-perishable goods to others who have less. 
In addition to serving her community in the Lexington County area, she also knew she wanted to gather courage and serve those in the Western North Carolina area. So she decided to travel with Samaritan’s Purse to help with recovery efforts.
Peterson says her best friend, Breezy Norton in Irmo, had volunteered with the non-profit organization and she really wanted to do the same. 
She went up on a weekend and said she’ll volunteer again as the need is great.
“We went to a couple of different houses and helped them chop up trees, building dams and did yard work,” Peterson said. “I felt like I made a difference in someone’s day whether it was small or major. ... I feel like I contributed what I could although I still feel like I could do more and want to do more."