Newborn baby spends night in a Walmart parking lot after Hurricane Michael damages family's home, so the store showers them with gifts
One newborn baby’s life got off to a stormy start, but Walmart stepped in to supply some sunshine.
Baby Luke was born Oct. 13, right after Hurricane Michael tore through parts of the south, including his hometown, Panama City, Fla. The hurricane resulted in at least 36 deaths, including 26 in Florida. Aware of the damage in Panama City, the family looked for a hotel room near the hospital when mother and baby were released two days later. Unable to find a vacancy, they were forced to drive back to their apartment in Panama City, despite the closed roads and stormy skies.
They arrived safely but quickly realized they couldn’t stay. There was no power, the baby was overheating, and there was a lot of water damage. The couple, whose two other children were staying with family, checked out some FEMA shelters, but the unsafe and unsanitary conditions were no place for a newborn.
So they went to Walmart.
“It was better off in our truck in a Walmart parking lot,” Wilmer Capps said in a video interview with Walmart. “I was worried about my wife and my son. … And when we went to the shelter and seeing what kind of living conditions it was, I was like, no way,” he said. Their pickup truck was in bad shape, with leaking windows caused by the storm.
“I had two flat tires, running out of gas — the whole nine yards,” said new mom Lorrainda Smith. “So we didn’t have too many more options.”
It’s not uncommon for people to camp out in a Walmart parking lot. Walmart truck driver Nick Davis said he sees it every night.
Michelle Malashock, a spokesperson for Walmart, told Yahoo Lifestyle that “Walmart being 24 hours, a lot of people feel safe in those parking lots because they have security, they’re well-lit.”
“There was lights all around; they had a generator,” Smith said. Capps added: “There was a cool breeze, no bugs.”
They also had personal security. “One of our security guards found them and was like, ‘Hey, you’re welcome to stay here,’” Malashock said. “They basically said, ‘We’ll keep watch over you.’”
“The security guard told us, ‘It’s probably the safest spot you can be right now.’ And that’s why we stayed at Walmart in Callaway for the first night,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘We’ve got to have a miracle happen right about now or else we’re in trouble.’”
The security guard returned to deliver that miracle — or the first part of it, at least: He had secured a room for them at a nearby hotel where Walmart was providing accommodation for associates who had evacuated or were helping with relief efforts.
“I was like, ‘This is exactly what I just wished for, we need this right now,’” Smith said.
That’s where they met Davis, who would be delivering the next part of their miracle. “He came to the area from LaGrange, Ga., and he was hauling a shower trailer,” Malashock said. “We do [this] … so our associates and first responders can get good hot showers. Three other truck drivers … were hauling a cook trailer so we could supply meals. We have a pretty robust disaster response protocol. We want the associates to be able to come back to [work]; they want to come back to work.”
While the Cappses aren’t part of the official Walmart family, that didn’t matter. “The family was basically adopted, so to speak, by those security guards and these four truck drivers,” Malashock said.
Davis, in particular, felt compelled to help. He told Yahoo Lifestyle that the moment he saw the 3-day-old baby, his “father instinct” kicked in. “I have a 7-year-old. I know how hard those first few weeks are — they’re amazing, but they’re very stressful,” he said. “We’d have done it for anybody. But the baby’s what really made me jump, quick. I just think about mine when I see something like that.”
Hearing the family’s larger story also moved the driver. “Wilmer said, ‘Nick, I just made my rent for that month. And then, bam, it hit us, and I was trying to make sure all my bills were in order before the baby came,’ because he knew he was going to take off about a week to spend time with the baby. And then all this happened and he was out of money.”
In the video, Capps explained that they had also recently bought new furniture, which was now all gone. “They’re basically starting over,” said Malashock, who met the family this week. “They lost everything in the storm.” She added that Capps had told her, “You work so hard to get ready for a baby, and we did it, we were ready, and Michael had another idea.’”
“We had everything: full-time job, a place to live,” Smith told AP. “One day we had it all, the next we had nothing.”
Davis realized they needed more than a room for a couple of nights. “They were leaving for the first checkup for the baby, and me and the security guard were standing there, and before she left we said, ‘What do you have?’ And they said, ‘Whatever the hospital gave us.’” Davis said the couple salvaged what they could from their apartment, but there wasn’t much. “So we gave them gas money to get back to the hospital for the checkup.” When they left, Davis and his colleagues got busy.
They called corporate to share the Capps’s story and got approval to use the corporate card to spend $300 on supplies for the family. Walmart staffers also chipped in. “It was 30 minutes later we had money at the store ready to go,” Davis said in the video. “I caught the store manager and told him our situation, what we had, and asked if he would help. And he actually donated more money to the family, on top of what we had already been authorized to use.” He found the baby department manager, who helped him stock a shopping cart full of supplies, from diapers to formula to pacifiers.
“When we got back to the hotel, they hadn’t gotten back yet, so we got the hotel manager to get us in their room, and that’s when we just put everything in their room,” Davis told Yahoo Lifestyle. “There were probably like 30 or 40 bags of stuff and we didn’t say nothing when they pulled up, they were talking to everybody. And I think she was tired and said, ‘I’m just gonna go to my room.’ So she went up to her room, and she came back down crying.”
They also cooked for the family every night. “They were a godsend,” Capps said. “If it wasn’t for them … we would have been trouble,” Smith added. “If there was anything else [we needed], Nick was there.”
News traveled fast, and Walmart wanted to do more. “When we heard about this literally days-old baby who started his life in our parking lot, it just seemed like something we had to do,” Malashock said. So they threw a baby shower where it all started: Walmart.
“We had been helping them with the FEMA application process for housing and stuff like that, so on Tuesday, [Oct. 30] we brought them to the store,” Malashock said. “We told them they needed to come in for a FEMA meeting, which isn’t a real thing. We brought them into the store, where we had set up a makeshift baby shower for them, and Nick drove with his dad and another associate all the way from LaGrange just to reunite with the family. The original security guard was there. The store manager, and Julie the baby department manager — she was crying — and other associates.”
Along with a big cake, the store manager presented the couple with generous gifts. “We partnered with Wyndham Destinations to get them additional time at a different property; it’s a vacation rental. And we were able to donate a year’s worth of diapers, $500 in online groceries, and a $500 gift card.”
Capp and Smith were overwhelmed. “They were not expecting any of that,” Malashock said. “It was just heartwarming because we gave them that gift card and before they left, they bought a baby tub and a wipe warmer, because they needed those things. I’m sure they had them already at the apartment, but they can’t go back there.”
They weren’t even sure they would make it out of the apartment safely before Luke was born.
“It sounded like our whole building was falling down around us — tt was, though,” Smith said. “And then the eye had come through I was like, well maybe it’s over with. It got a little better. … It sounded like trains coming.”
Seeing their apartment was heartbreaking. And though the hurricane has forced to start from scratch, Walmart has given them a head start. They’re eater to tell Luke about it.
“We’re gonna tell him everything from the beginning,” Smith said. “I can’t wait for him to come back and meet everybody again as he grows.” Capps looked down at Luke and said, “You’ve got family you don’t even know.”
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