Standing out
El Centro resident honored for aid to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico
EL CENTRO — El Centro resident Michelle Wolfinger-Valle wasn’t looking for recognition when she was creating and sending care packages last year to Puerto Rico residents in need after Hurricane Maria. But she found it anyway.
She found it at home, for one. The city of El Centro proclaimed Dec. 1 as “Michelle Wolfinger-Valle Day” for her humanitarian efforts following the September 2017 hurricane, which was regarded as the worst natural disaster on record to affect the island.
“It is an honor to recognize Michelle for her selfless work on behalf of the people in Puerto Rico whose lives were devastated by this hurricane,” El Centro City Councilmember Cheryl Viegas-Walker said Thursday. “She is a hero.”
Wolfinger-Valle was found recognition in Puerto Rico. As a result of the El Centro proclamation, she was invited by the first lady of Puerto Rico, Beatriz Rossello, on Dec. 5 to meet at the La Fortaleza in Puerto Rico. She returned home from the trip on Tuesday.
“This is a recognition for everyone,” Wolfinger-Valle said Thursday. “I share this with everyone.”
Wolfinger-Valle was born and raised in San Juan, P.R., and moved to El Centro with her husband in 2005.
When it was announced Hurricane Maria would strike, thoughts of how her family and her hometown would survive immediately came to mind.
“I felt like there was nothing I could do from here,” Wolfinger-Valle said. “As a Puerto Rican, I felt like I had my hands tied.”
A total of 3,057 fatalities were reported, and the island’s entire population of 3.4 million was affected as a result of the disaster.
“There’s not a single soul on the island that was not affected by it … rich, poor, everyone,” Wolfinger-Valle said.
Downed power grids and broken cell phone towers kept her from immediately communicating with cousins, aunts, grandparents and childhood friends on the island.
“All my family members, except my parents, were there” she said.
An absurd rise in the cost of airplane tickets kept most Puerto Ricans from leaving the island.
“They sky-rocketed … like to a thousand,” Wolfinger-Valle said. “They were stuck there. Here, if we have a disaster, we can maybe get in our car and go to Arizona or wherever else, you know. But they were stuck there because they’re surrounded by water.”
A loss of electricity also caused ATM machines to stop working, which, in turn, caused even the wealthiest residents to truly feel the hurricane’s devastating effects.
“So maybe you could have had a lot of money,” Wolfinger-Valle said. “But if you were not able to get money out, that was a problem. You were not able to buy anything.”
Yet, even those with cash at the time had a hard time putting it to any use, as stores were either shut down or overcrowded.
Wolfinger-Valle recalled her cousin once spent three hours in line just to get into a supermarket and then, after rushing to get any needed items, had to wait a few more hours just to check out.
“You have no idea how hard this is,” the cousin said to her at the time.
Heart-struck and determined to help her friends and family, the El Centro resident began gathering supplies to create care packages.
“For me, I was just packing tuna, sausages, beef jerky and granola bars,” Wolfinger-Valle said. “But for them, it meant the world.”
After hearing of how desperately other Puerto Ricans were in need of basic necessities, Wolfinger-Valle expanded her efforts of sending two or three packages for her loved ones to sending nearly 10 packages at time to be distributed.
“I would go to the post office almost every day just to get boxes,” the El Centro resident said. “Once, I sent like over 20 packages. It put a smile on my face just knowing that it was going to bring some happiness, but then I was seeing how it was affecting my pocket.”
Wolfinger-Valle then turned to Facebook to request any possible donations.
A number of local residents, businesses and even Mexicali residents provided enough monetary and item donations to keep Wolfinger-Valle’s efforts going strong.
As noted in the El Centro proclamation, Wolfinger-Valle “gave all credit for this successful humanitarian effort to El Centro and its generous residents.”
“You have to give without expecting anything in return,” the El Centro resident said. “In 2017 it was Puerto Rico. Maybe some other day it could be us. It was totally worth it.”
Before meeting with the Puerto Rico’s first lady during her recent trip, Wolfinger-Valle took time to get a feel for how her hometown has been recovering.
“There’s still a lot of feelings,” she said. “Everybody I talked to, when the conversation came up, tears would come up. It’s something sad they will never forget. This is something that it will definitely be in their minds forever.”
Looking around San Juan, the place where she attended high school and the University of Puerto Rico, Wolfinger-Valle noticed the beaches and greenery looked slightly “prettier.”
“My uncle told me that’s because they were cleaned by Maria,” she said.
“There’s places that still don’t have like traffic lights, but people, like my cousin, told me, ‘We have learned to live like this.’ It is progressing.
I can’t say that it’s not. It is progressing.”
Wolfinger-Valle recalled that first lady Rossello was quite interested in El Centro and its people.
“She was very happy that a part of California so little compared to other places didn’t forget about Puerto Rico,” Wolfinger-Valle said. “We don’t have many Puerto Rican families in El Centro, so she was just very happy that people stepped up and they didn’t forget about (Puerto Rico).”
Wolfinger-Valle took great pride in being able to explain the place she considers her second home to such an important political figure.
“I talked to her about here and how many people we had and we were so close to the border,” she said. “I talked to her about Mexicali. It was very nice very nice conversation … and obviously she had not heard of El Centro until Dec. 5.”
A proclamation from El Centro — let alone meeting with Puerto Rico’s first lady — was something Wolfinger-Valle had never considered when she shipped her first care package.
“I didn’t even know what a proclamation was,” she said. “I had to look it up. It’s very nice, but I think this proclamation is not about me. This is about my other home, which is called El Centro. I was so happy to be able to sit with the first lady of Puerto Rico and let her know about El Centro and Mexicali.
That was big for me. And not to only focus on the negative that happened, but also on the positive, like us being a little town in California and seeing what we were able to do. I’ve lived here for 13 years, but I’m Puerto Rican. That’s something that I will always be proud of. But I’m also proud of being a resident of El Centro. This is my home, too.”