‘That’s my people. And they’re hurting’: Volunteers help San Bernardino mountain residents

Beth Jahnsen’s parents were snowed in at their home in Crestline with no electricity for six days.

“My parents weren’t in dire need, but I imagined, what if they were?” Jahnsen said. “I kept seeing posts, and it was this helpless, hopeless feeling.”

With the impulse to make a difference extending beyond her own family, Jahnsen was at Sandals Church in San Bernardino on Sunday, where a donation center was set up to help the many San Bernardino mountain residents stuck in their homes amidst a shrinking supply of food, medication and other necessities after February’s blizzard.

Jahnsen was among a group of about 30 volunteers collecting everything from baby supplies to pet food for caravans up the hill. The group had to switch its operations from a hospital parking lot on Sunday morning after Sheriff’s officials once again curtailed helicopter flights, organizers said. But the volunteers figured they’d simply push on, loading all the donations into 4 X 4s for what became road trips.

Kelwyn Wild, 43, manages facilities and logistics at Sandals Church. “We have lots of church members in Lake Arrowhead,” said Wild, who was a firefighter in Redlands for 15 years. Volunteering to help in a crisis, he said, simply feels like a calling to him.

Six trucks full of badly needed items went up earlier in the day, he said, and there were plans for 10 more vehicles to follow in the afternoon.

A man with donations rode up on a motorcycle. He was clad in a leather jacket covered in patches. He goes by “Grandpa Tiger,” he said.

Tiger said he works in pest control on the mountain during the winter. He feels a “deep connection” to the residents up there.

“That’s my people,” he said. “And they’re hurting.”

The volunteers said they won’t stop, no matter how many times they have to switch locations, continuing to collect supplies for mountain residents every day for a while.

“There’s people who are desperate, hungry, scared, alone,” said Dawn Wisnery-Johnson, Jahnsen’s sister. “If people see normal people like us doing something, maybe other people would do something.

“If everybody did that in San Bernardino and Riverside, we’d be done.”