Hurricane Harvey-Paul&Lily Mascheri

I (Julie Biggott) have started this Go Fund Me page to help my brother Paul Mascheri and his wife Lily in these hard times during Hurricane Harvey.  Paul & Lily have taken in over 30 people who have been displaced including children and three babies who need milk. Currently they are unable to leave their subdivision but they will need all the help they can get once the flooding goes down. 

Houston, TX has been hit so hard with flooding and no power in some area's.  This money will help Paul & Lily get food to family, friends and neighbors in need.  It will also help buy water, clothing, shoes, etc.  

Any amount will mean a lot to the people that have been affective in this hurricane.   With your help, we can make a difference to those who have lost so much during this horrible time. 

Please remember that the sooner we get donations the sooner we can make a difference.  Thank you in this time of need.

Julie Biggott (Mascheri)

Paul Mascheri  added this

Organizes Hurricane Harvey Relief

Paul Mascheri is a former U.S. Air Force flight commander who spent much of his life defending America, but this long-time Houston resident is now spending his days saving neighbors whose lives have been severely decimated by Hurricane Harvey.

“A lot of the families that we’re taking care of are civilians just trying to make it, as far as getting by,” said Mascheri, who was making one of his daily rounds during our phone interview. “That is what our goal was — to help the county, community and coworkers, so we’re doing everything we can to help our neighborhoods.”



Mascheri has raised more than $3,000 thus far through his Go Fund Me page, and he has recruited more than 23 families, plus friends, coworkers and neighbors, to make two-to-three daily rounds of more than five hours each time. They drive about 75 square miles every day to purchase and deliver necessities to families around that part of Texas.

“At first I had just a couple of us, and since then what I’ve been able to do is organize it to where I will have people in certain areas [of Houston] meet up,” Mascheri said, “and what we will do is give them supplies to take down to certain parts of the area.”



A local man in Houston who has been working to help people

Unfortunately, the repercussions of Hurricane Harvey go beyond destroyed property. At these multiple daily outings, Mascheri and his team are often limited to buying one dozen eggs and one gallon of milk at many of the grocery stores in Houston. They often have to travel farther north to buy essential food items. Additionally, his team uses the funds to purchase gift cards at Target, Kohl’s and other stores that are easily accessible and “finally coming back online,” Mascheri says, to help people, so they can help themselves.



A teenager delivering food while she can’t go to school.

When Mascheri began organizing this endeavor a bit more than a week ago, he networked with Gilbert Audet, partial owner of Grunt Style, and asked to use the company’s Houston warehouse for his efforts.

“We just opened the warehouse, and a lot of people arrived [there]” Audet said. “We received a lot of goods at the warehouse, and after that we found people like Paul around Houston, and we did everything good all over the place with his organization.”

That space has since then been providing shelter and meals for Houston-area residents who have been displaced from their homes, and it has also been ground zero for a major part of the operation.

“Gilbert was in charge of where the warehouse was on the west side of town, where they were storing supplies,” Mascheri said. “At one point they had over 100 veterans in there working on distribution from Port Arthur through Houston all the way down to Rockport where the hurricanes had hit, so they worked a very large area on a larger scale.”



A couple of veterans helping Mascheri

Mascheri has not only recruited local civilians and veterans, but his reach has extended beyond Texas’ borders. Former member of the Army National Guard Michael Trot arrived in Houston late Sunday evening. He had learned about Mascheri’s operation through social media and felt compelled to leave his warm home in Chicago to make supply runs around dilapidated Houston.

“I just saw a Facebook post from a couple of friends, including [Paul Mascheri],” Trot said, “and as soon as I saw it, I just called and said, ‘Where do I go?’”



A group of Mascheri’s team clearing a destroyed home

Hurricane Harvey has been named to greatest natural disaster in United States history, with destruction totaling upwards of $200 billion. Mascheri says that people are staying as positive as they can during these initial clean-up operations, getting everything out and gutted is the beginning of the recovery, and understands the relief effort will take a very long time.

Donate to Paul and Lily Mascheri’s relief efforts of Hurricane Harvey by going to www.gofundme.com/hurricane-harveypaullily-mascheri.