Cindy Platko’s Mint Hill garage is filled with gear for the cold weather. The stockpile is born from a need her family saw in the homeless community, in uptown Charlotte 15 years ago. “Somehow, we needed to do something,” Platko says.

Since then, the family’s yearly collection has grown a hundred times over. “It starts with one or two people,” Platko says. “And pretty soon it was 20 people, and now we have over 120 volunteers.”

She is showing that you do not have to be a county leader or a local shelter to help the homeless community when temperatures dip to freezing. Platko is collecting things like 100 sleeping bags, even 200 backpacks, to help other families she has never met.

“That could be my brother, my sister, my mother, my father,” Platko says. People from local schools, churches, businesses, and other families are chipping in.