It's 7:30 a.m. and Nick Papatonis is on his 24th hour without sleep. Cramped in a makeshift 8-by-10-foot office in his modest one-bedroom apartment dining room, he rubs his sleepless eyes. Phone numbers, memos and files flood off the fold-out table and blanket the surrounding walls. Next to photographs of smiling New Orleans evacuees, buried beneath a stack of donations lists and rental truck forms, a phone begins to ring.
"Katrina Help Austin, this is Nick. How can I help?"
Grassroots activist and Austin Access TV producer Papatonis barely makes enough to provide for himself and his medically trained pitbull, Brown, but that hasn't stopped him from completely devoting his past few weeks to organizing a massive project to help devastated Katrina evacuees. The project that began with just three people has been working around the clock since the flooding started, and has now gained the attention of national media, including Newsweek Magazine and USA Today.
"Katrina Help Austin operates 24 hours, seven days a week. There's always something to be done," Papatonis said.
According to the half-blind and partially-deaf 49-year-old, Papatonis felt overwhelmed watching the Katrina news coverage and decided he wanted to create a place where evacuees could escape the crowded events center and find the things they need to begin their lives again.
"Camp Katrina," as volunteers call the distribution center, is located behind Nick's small apartment building in a 10-acre field owned by the neighboring San Jose Church. Army-green Air Force tents borrowed from Fort Hood line the entire field and house the tables overflowing with box-fulls of clothes, dishes, baby strollers and other supplies organized by volunteers.
Everyday, starting around 8 a.m. and ending near 10 p.m., Enterprise rental truck convoys funded by actress Sandra Bullock transport the evacuees from the events center to "Camp Katrina" where they can spend the day relaxing in the sun, riding donated bicycles or searching through the tents to find what they need.
"I will admit, I'm exhausted, but it's definitely worth the joy I see on those people's faces when they get here. Most are just happy to get away for a while," said Margaret Wimczormk, Nick's office assistant.
Last week, UT Student Government President Omar Ochoa, corresponded with Katrina Help Austin and helped recruit more than two dozen volunteers with the help of the UT Student Volunteer Board. For four hours Thursday night, members from fraternities Alpha Tau Omega and Sigma Lambda Beta organized and moved tables overflowing with donations.
"It was amazing how much stuff there was. We were there until nearly midnight," said Ochoa, a business honors senior.
In another effort to get evacuees out of the events center, Nick has been working to match evacuee families with people in Austin who want to share their homes and with finding apartments offering provisional rent-free spaces. Already the organization has found temporary housing for 600 people and has placed more than 425 families in homes.
It's now almost 8 a.m., and Nick puts down the phone for the 10th time in the past 30 minutes.
"Time to welcome back the convoy," Nick said.
Rising almost unwillingly from the teetering fold-out chair, he reaches for the door handle while grabbing a fresh blue-and-white name tag. Written in red marker, the tag reads "Nick - Organizer." He let out a final sigh and smiled as the sunshine bathed his face from the open door.
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