They helped her during Hurricane Matthew. Now this SC woman wants to help Houston.

On Saturday morning, the black Jeep will ease out of a Beaufort driveway carrying necessities for flood-ravaged Houston, Texas.

The 12-foot trailer will carry toothpaste and pet food, baby formula and clothes, towels, pet carriers and a wheelchair that’s no longer needed. If there are more items than space, Gabriella Turner will rent a truck.

Her expedition began with a description of her trip and a late-night request for donations on social media earlier this week. She awoke to her phone bursting with notifications.

“I have been completely and utterly overwhelmed,” Turner said. “...It makes you feel good about the human race. Despite all the junk you see going on, the real word isn’t like that.”

Turner’s bigger-than-double garage began filling up. She scheduled pick-up events throughout Beaufort County this week, the last at Sam’s in Bluffton on Friday afternoon.

As she loaded items from her garage into the trailer Friday afternoon, a Buick pulled into the driveway and unloaded quilts donated by the Sea Island Quilters.

Maggie’s Pub donated money to help cover the U-Haul. Port Royal Veterinary Hospital is donating pet supplies.

Turner planned to fill only half the U-Haul before picking up more items in Bluffton.

“When she posted, I thought we might have an SUV full of stuff,” said Turner’s friend Laura Maule, who will also make the trip. “But hey, it’s awesome.”

Now they’ll drive the roughly 1,000 miles to Dallas to spend a night with Turner’s family before heading south to Houston. It’s a trip Turner also made last fall, when she fled Hurricane Matthew to Texas despite being affected by a debilitating condition.

She was pet-sitting for friends, and so the passengers during the evacuation also included five dogs and a cat. Turner has two dogs and a cat of her own and keeps a cat trap handy to find new homes for strays she encounters.

Turner, 26, has a form of dysautonomia, a condition involving the autonomic nervous system. She said her symptoms began in 2015.

The disorder causes her blood to pool for her to get woozy and pass out. She couldn’t sit up in bed and required a wheelchair until this past January, when a new medication had her soon jogging at the gym.

She was able to complete EMT classes after letting her certification lapse.

And now the wheelchair and crutches are going in the U-Haul trailer.

The support she got during her health care crisis helped spur her decision to help Harvey victims.

When she returned from evacuating Matthew, neighbors had cleaned up the debris in her yard. She recruited them to help again during her donations drive.

A natural disaster is what first drove Turner’s family to Texas, when a tornado destroyed their Nashville, Tenn., home in 1998.

Her sister, Tory Langford, teaches students with special needs at Arnold Public Middle School in Cyrpress. Turner is friends with paramedics in the area who are connecting her with specific families’ needs.

Items will be separated into individual packs so people won’t have to spend time digging through piles to find what they need.

“I want people to feel as human as they can,” Turner said.

As she packed Friday, Turner talked about Hurricane Irma, a powerful storm still hundreds of miles away. The system could be devastating another part of the U.S. by the time she’s wrapping up the seven-day trip to Texas.

The trailer could head a new direction.

This story was originally published September 2, 2017 at 7:57 AM with the headline "They helped her during Hurricane Matthew. Now this SC woman wants to help Houston.."