This fall’s hurricanes prompted a generous outpouring of help from the Roaring Fork Valley community. Here are a couple of the ways locals helped victims affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita:

– The Aspen Community Foundation’s Community-to-Community Fund, a local fund-raising effort, sent $153,455 to the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to assist in hurricane relief efforts. A total of $94,155 was received from 36 individual donors and families, and the fund received $59,300 – half of the proceeds of the City of Aspen’s “Fat Tuesday” event in September.

– Student Jose Pineda and Bruce Baker from the Snowmass Village Rotary Club (pictured above) hold a check from Colorado Mountain College ESL students that represents the $408 the students raised to help Katrina victims. The money went to the Slidell, La., Rotary Club.

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The fund-raising drive started with a class assignment to write three sentences, using three verb tenses. Pineda’s sentences were about Hurricane Katrina, and his professor, Lesley Rameil, picked up on his last sentence musing how he could help.