Community lends a hand to RV fire victim
FRANKLIN TWP — Rick Dorr is no stranger to disaster, but he’s used to being the one helping people whose lives have been turned upside down.
Dorr, at 68, has been doing disaster relief work for nearly a decade — since, as he puts it, he “got the calling” after going through three heart attacks, two double bypass surgeries, and other complications from congestive heart failure and diabetes.
In 2008 Door traveled from Maine to Texas after hurricane Ike slammed into the Gulf Coast. He would spend five months in the state, coordinating thousands of volunteers as they worked to respond to billions of dollars in damages across Texas and Louisiana.
From there Dorr — a former small business owner — went on to pursuits like jailhouse ministry until January, when he got another call: this time to pick up his life and begin traveling.
“The good Lord, he called me to go on the road,” Dorr said.
That’s where Dorr was on Saturday afternoon in Butler County when a freak accident resulted in his RV — more accurately, his home and all his possessions — burned to the ground.
Since then it’s been Door himself in need of disaster relief — a position in which he’s not used to finding himself.
“It’s tough,” Dorr said. “Because it’s like, right now you go down to the store to pick something up ... and you ain’t got no place to put it. You just start thinking: you’ve got nothing.”
In Dorr’s case, that’s not an exaggeration. He managed to save a phone, a laptop computer and the clothes on his back, but everything else in the vehicle — including Dorr’s diabetes medication — went up in flames.
That’s the state in which Dorr walked into Bent Wilson’s Verizon store Saturday evening; he was looking for a way to charge his dying cell phone without having to buy a phone charger he couldn’t afford at the moment.
That’s when a group of store employees recognized Dorr from a Butler Eagle report on the vehicle fire and sprung into action.
Sales associates Brent Wilson and Ryan Roche were the first to introduce themselves to Dorr. They got his phone charged — and then did something Dorr did not expect: they offered to help him out.
Wilson and Roche started a collection among their coworkers, and a group of six — Wilson, Roche, Shannon McCreary, Wes Hortert, Travis Kovalovsky and Matthew Marsico — gathered enough money to put Dorr up in a Days Inn for the night.
The plan, Roche said, was to give Dorr a little time to breathe while he waited for his insurance company to get in touch about the RV fire. But the relief efforts didn’t stop there, Roche said. As word spread people began dropping clothing, cash and other items off at the Verizon store for Dorr.
“I’m very thankful that everybody came together,” Roche said. “Everybody’s been completely positive. I wish we could help him out a little more, but the little things are what’s important right now.”
The help didn’t stop on Saturday, either. The next day Dorr was at a car show at Unionville Fire Station when he bumped into members of the department who offered shirts and hats, and helped connect him with the Red Cross, which moved to get Dorr accommodations for that night as well.
Unionville Fire Chief Nathan Wulff said the department’s efforts on Dorr’s behalf aren’t anything outside the norm; it’s the situation itself that’s strange.
“He just needed led in the right direction, I think, and I’m glad we were able to help him” Wulff said. “Being that it wasn’t a house, but was his home, it was kind of a different situation.”
For now, Dorr said, he’s staying in Butler County while he waits to hear back from his insurance company — a fraught process because it’s unlikely that his policy will cover any of the items that were inside his RV. Still, he said, he wants to thank everyone who has rallied to his cause since a fire took his home and nearly all his possessions.
“I really feel blessed, you know? It’s a little tougher when you got what you got, but hey, I’m OK,” Dorr said. “People have been a tremendous help to me, and I want to be sure to thank them.”
