MSU alumna Paula Reser (left) stands next to her friend Catherine Diebold (right) on a beach. Photo courtesy of Paula Reser
Paula Reser, an MSU alumna, and her friend Catherine Diebold were in Florida enjoying a fun girls trip when they heard the news.
They received a notification from one of their family members about the shooting taking place at Michigan State and turned on the police scanner.
“We looked at each other and we decided nope, we’re going home,” Reser said.
With Diebold driving, the two women made the 15-hour trip back to East Lansing.
“We didn't know if we could be of any help then, but we thought, well, 15 hours from now, maybe there's something we can do," Reser said. "Maybe there's some way we can help.”
Reser threw up a quick post on Facebook explaining that she and her friends could organize rides out of town or provide gas money for fleeing students. She didn’t expect for the post to take off so fast.
“We have rallied over 30 local families and have vehicles on standby to make sure you can go hug your parents and get out of here,” said Reser’s Facebook post, which now has over 2,000 shares.
“It started out with, I need a ride to the airport," Reser said. "Cool, let's go to the airport. And then it was, I just need like 25 bucks. Okay, we’ve got 25 bucks, let’s go! Then, it just took off and volunteers started pouring into my messages.”
Reser made a CashApp to accommodate the donations that were coming in to make things simpler.
Students were requesting something to eat, so Reser and fellow volunteers would give out DoorDash gift cards. Requests started coming in asking for help getting home, so volunteers have been sponsoring plane tickets to take students home to Florida and have been driving kids to the Detroit Airport to get them back home to places like Chicago and Texas.
“I’m just trying to be the adult that I needed when I was a kid,” Reser said. “I know what it’s like to be a student that just wants to go home.”
Reser explained that a lot of what she has been doing is texting and playing the middleman. She has been putting the pieces together via emails and texts, matching volunteers that are offering home cooked meals with hungry students, or matching drivers with students looking for a ride to Chicago.
Reser said students requesting Cash App donations should email pjprojectcollab@gmail.com via their MSU email to differentiate from any random donation requests. Random requests will be declined until Reser receives an email verifying that the person making the request is a student.
“You guys are being so humble about this,” Reser said. “They’re just asking for change and they really just want to go home.”
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