Hurrican Sandy Victums Catch a Break

Kerry Ann Troy had just finished her daily "cry time" — that half-hour between dropping the kids off at school and driving back to her gutted house on New York's Long Island, or to the hurricane relief center, or to wherever she was headed in those desperate days after Sandy, when life seemed an endless blur of hopelessness and worry.

After spending the first week with relatives in Connecticut, Troy, a part-time events planner for the city, and her husband, Chris, a firefighter, had managed to find a hotel room for a week in Garden City. The couple had no idea where they and their three children — Ryan, 13, Connor, 12, and Katie, 4 — would go next. Hotels were full. Rentals were gone. Their modest raised ranch, a few blocks from the beach, was unlivable.

And then — in the space of a few hours — everything changed. A school administrator pulled Kerry Ann aside when she went to pick up Katie. She told her of a vacant summer home — a spacious, fully furnished, three-bedroom house in nearby Point Lookout, which the owners wished to donate to a displaced family. The Troys could live there indefinitely, at no cost, while they sorted out their lives.

Kerry Ann could hardly believe their good fortune. The kids could stay in their schools. The family could go to Florida after all.

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