When Ben Lomond native Britney Overbeck saw the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the news in 2005, she felt a compelling urge to do something. The calling to help Katrina’s victims was so powerful that Overbeck lost sleep over it.
So she answered.
Since then, the 35-year-old has led eight teams to do recovery work in Pearlington, a small town on the state line of Louisiana and Mississippi with a population of 1,684, according to the 2000 census.
“When I first got there, it looked like a war zone,” Overbeck recalled. “They needed help, and we invested a lot of ourselves. Once we started working that week, we knew we had to go back.”
Overbeck left Thursday, March 25, for her ninth trip to Pearlington.
Her tireless relief efforts are gaining recognition. The youth minister at Felton Presbyterian Church was recently announced as one of the recipients of the Jefferson Award for the Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito county regions. She is the only Santa Cruz County recipient of the award.
The Jefferson Awards are a prestigious recognition to honor public service in the U.S., presented at both national and local levels. They began in 1972 to create a Nobel Prize for public service and now serve as a platform to promote volunteer work in communities.
Overbeck will miss the Jefferson Award reception, however — she will be in Mississippi.
“We have a connection and an investment there. We are attached to seeing them rebuild,” she said.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall just south of Pearlington, and of the town’s 800 to 900 households, only nine could move back immediately after the hurricane passed, Overbeck said. Five years later, thousands of displaced residents in Mississippi and Louisiana still live in trailers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In Pearlington, Overbeck gutted many damaged homes and helped rebuild them, completing tasks that included repairing sheetrock and anything else she was asked to do.
Overbeck also received the Jefferson Award in part for her local efforts. She pulls together a group for the annual Sharefest, a day when volunteers from all over the county tackle community service jobs.
Overbeck has led a youth mission team to California’s Central Valley, where they gave food to low-income families, and another trip to Mexico, to build houses for people in need.
Still, she said she’s touched and amazed to be a Jefferson recipient.
“I feel humbled by the award,” she said. “It doesn’t just point out that I have done something good, but that my parents and the community in which I have been raised has done something good as well.”
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