When floods devastated Central Appalachia in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and wildfires destroyed homes in Los Angeles, Vol students and alumni stepped up to help. They gave of their time and used their talents to help those whose lives were turned upside down by natural disasters.
Dayne Davis, center, drops off supplies to a family in Johnson County, Tennessee.
In the days following Hurricane Helene, Vol football’s Dayne Davis (’23, ’24) felt compelled to use his platform to help Tennesseans in need. The morning after the football team returned home from a stinging loss in Arkansas, the offensive tackle and his girlfriend filled a car to the roof with groceries and drove two and a half hours northeast to storm-ravaged Johnson County—close by Davis’s hometown of Bluff City, Tennessee.
Despite his busy schedule competing on the football team and finishing up his master’s degree in management and human resources, Davis raised nearly $12,000 for people affected by the hurricane. That money not only bought groceries but also helped people make crucial repairs to their damaged homes.
Davis recounts the stories of some of the people he helped, including a friend’s family who lost four houses in the disaster and a man who saw the home where both he and his mother had been born washed away by the creek.
“That hits you hard as a person, but to be able to help those people—to see the smile it puts on their face and the joy that it brings—it brings me joy if I see just one person smile from it,” Davis says.
Sierra Stancil
Meanwhile, senior Sierra Stancil sprang into action to help another vulnerable population after Helene. When the hurricane devastated her hometown of Erwin, Tennessee, Stancil—an animal science major with a concentration in pre-veterinary medicine—drew upon her lifelong love of animals to help pets and their families who had been affected by the destruction.
Teaming up with veterinary practices in Erwin (Unicoi Animal Hospital) and Knoxville (Central Veterinary Hospital) as well as global animal health company Zoetis, Stancil helped care for animals hurt in the storm and collected donated supplies for people and pets who had lost everything. In partnership with Unicoi Animal Hospital, she helped many pets heal from injuries after the hurricane.
“Serving my hometown has lit a fire in my soul to continue supporting those in need,” she says. “The huge response from UT and across the state has shown me what it means to be a Volunteer. After I graduate, I plan to attend UT College of Veterinary Medicine and work tirelessly to become a great veterinarian who gives back to their community.”
A few months after Helene, and thousands of miles away, Ashley Sharp (’18) helped her community during a different kind of disaster.
As a reporter and anchor for CBS Sacramento Channel 13 News, Sharp had been posting videos on TikTok as she and her photographer, Dave Grashoff, covered the wildfires that were ravaging greater Los Angeles. On January 9, Sharp and Grashoff traveled to a home in Altadena at the behest of a TikTok follower, Katie, who had seen one of their previous videos and noticed they were near her neighborhood. Katie had evacuated from her home and asked if Sharp could get an update on its condition.
Sharp and Grashoff agreed to swing by the house even though it was not on their tight schedule. Unfortunately, the news was grim—the home, which had been in Katie’s family since the 1950s, was gone.
Over the next few days, requests poured in from other evacuees desperately seeking updates about their homes. Sharp did her best to help as many people as she could. Her empathetic coverage of the wildfires led to her going viral on TikTok and being lauded by the public for her work. Throughout the tragedy, her on-the-ground coverage aired on her station and others throughout CBS’s network. She was invited to appear on CBS Mornings, where she shared her story with the show’s national audience.
This wasn’t Sharp’s first time reporting about a wildfire—as a UT student, she covered the 2016 fires in the Great Smoky Mountains while working part-time at Knoxville’s WBIR Channel 10 News. She credits UT with teaching her to go above and beyond to help those in need.
“The Volunteer spirit is just going out of your way to help somebody else and not thinking about yourself in that moment,” Sharp says. “I hope I was able to show that Volunteer spirit. This wasn’t about me. It was about helping somebody else.”
Reporting contributed by Ernest Rollins, Cassandra J. Sproles, and Vivian DiSalvo