LAS VEGAS (KLAS) A group of UNLV nursing students turned a week’s worth of outreach and planning to stage a heartwarmingly successful donation drive Saturday to help first responders fighting – and community members reeling and recovering from – the deadly Los Angeles-area wildfires and the fires in the Pacific Palisades in particular.

“Every person that we’ve asked for help has said, ‘How can I help more,'” Caryn Ramsey, the fourth-year nursing student and a student government president who organized the event. “And that’s just very touching.”

Ramsey and about 30 other students—along with some 15 faculty members—put out the word that they planned on collecting clothing, nonperishables like water and canned food, and other necessities and delivering them by truck to first responders and those in Southern California who are rebuilding their homes and lives after weeks of historic burning in so many communities.

“It’s not going to give everybody everything,” Ramsey said, echoing a sentiment conveyed to her by one of her colleagues. “But it is going to make an impact.”

The impetus for the impressive drive was an email from a first-year nursing student,  Kayla Oseguera, who left her home in Southern California for UNLV at the beginning of January. Within a few days of her arrival – and of her new life in Las Vegas – her homeland was on fire and she wrote an email to her fellow UNLV nursing school students for help. 

“That email was her action,” Ramsey said.

“I know that UNLV has such a supportive community for their students,” Oseguera said. “And I knew that I could call on them and that they would show up and they would help bring together a piece of my UNLV community back home where they need it.” 

And the community delivered. At the drive Saturday, volunteers unloaded cars full of donations at the  UNLV Clinical Simulation Center on Charleston Boulevard at the intersection of Shadow Lane near UMC. Other volunteers throughout the UNLV community also delivered, including volunteers from the School of Dental Medicine, who packed by hand over 1,000 dental hygiene kits into plastic bags. 

“I kind of want to cry because it’s so heartwarming,” Oseguera said. “It’s so, so, so heartwarming.” 

The organizers say they still have a need for high-protein energy bars and energy drinks to give to firefighters and first responders. They may hold another drive on Friday, January 24, on UNLV’s main campus. For more information or to donate money electronically, please email sonstudentgov@unlv.edu.