Amanda Mohamed got the call at work.

Her friend, a local news reporter, was covering a breaking story in Squirrel Hill – a massive fire at Amanda’s apartment building.

"I lost nearly everything in my home," Amanda said.

She was 24 years old, less than a year into her first job after graduating from Penn State. She had only been living in the apartment for eleven months when the fire broke out, displacing Amanda and about 30 of her neighbors.

The hardest part was losing the sentimental items from Amanda's father, who died of cancer while she was in college. Days before the fire, she and her family cleared out his belongings from their family home in State College and moved everything meaningful into her Pittsburgh apartment."

That was what made it really bad," she said.With help from firefighters, Amanda was able to salvage some childhood photos and awards from Penn State from her burned apartment.

A friend who had been through a fire before pointed Amanda toward the American Red Cross, which had already set up an evacuation center for everyone displaced from the apartment fire. Red Cross volunteers met with Amanda and connected her with recovery resources.

"They helped me a lot," Amanda said.

The Red Cross responds to about 65,000 disasters every year in the United States, and most of them are home fires. After a disaster, the Red Cross provides shelter, food, relief supplies, financial assistance and emotional support to anyone who needs it.

Giving Back

Service was already part of who Amanda was long before the fire. At Penn State, she taught English as a second language, volunteered at summer camps for grieving children and held leadership roles across multiple campus organizations. Volunteering for the Red Cross had always been on her list, but experiencing a home fire firsthand moved it to the top.

"Once this happened, I decided it was the time to start," she said.

Today, Amanda is a Red Cross disaster volunteer. When a home fire breaks out or another emergency hits Pittsburgh, she gets a call and responds to help people in need. Through it all, Amanda cares for people who are living the worst days of their lives, making sure they know what comes next.

"It does bring me a little bit of comfort knowing people have been through the same thing and that I can help them," she said, “so they know that they are not alone."

More than 90% of the Red Cross workforce is made up of volunteers. People like Amanda are the reason the Red Cross is able to respond to a disaster every eight minutes, around the clock, in communities across the country.

"The Red Cross community has been awesome," she said. "Everyone I have met has been super nice. It is a really good group to be a part of."

Join Us!

Visit redcross.org/volunteer to learn how to become a Red Cross volunteer.