FORT WORTH, Texas – Seventeen-year-old Drew Payne can’t help but smile at the pictures. She can’t help but cherish the memories, and she definitely can’t help but appreciate the family vacation that changed everything.
“Yeah, it definitely changed how I think about vacations,” Payne, a senior at Colleyville High School, said. “That was like three years ago and I still think about it all the time.”
It began when drew was just 14. Her family was planning a road trip, first through Tennessee then on to South Carolina.
They’d taken many vacations before, but with each new place, Drew saw the same old thing.
“Living where we do there’s not a lot of homeless people,” she said. “But when we go on vacations, there’s a bigger chance of us running into people like that.”
That’s why, before this vacation, Drew announced she wasn’t going to take a trip where people were in need.
“I always feel bad if I don’t have like money on me or if I don’t have anything to give them,” she said. “So, I thought if we prepared beforehand, whenever we encountered people we’d having something to give them.”
So, as she packed her own bags, Drew packed for the homeless, too. She gave them snacks, water and whatever money she could scrounge up.
“It lasted through Tennessee and then I think we bought more stuff and kept going,” she said.
She now does this every vacation. But, since that wasn’t enough, she started doing it at home, too. Today, as often as she can, Drew hits the streets of Fort Worth looking for hungry homeless people.
“If they need things and I have them, then I’d like to give it to them,” she said.
She’s not alone. An army of volunteers not only raise money, they help whoever they can until they run out.
“I wish we had more stuff to give out, but we can always come back,” Drew said. “And that makes me feel better about it.”
She plans to keep coming back even after she leaves to college, because although she wants to be a teacher, she’s already found a calling.
“If I had like $1 million, that’s what I would want to do with it,” she said.
If only we had a million Drew Paynes, there wouldn’t be a need.