Talia Poy oversees the campus delivery of supplies donated by Duane Reade. Columbia Security coordinated the delivery to relief workers through the NYPD.

Mere minutes after the collapse of the World Trade Centers on Tuesday, Columbia students sought ways to offer a helping hand. Hundreds lined up at local hospitals to donate blood, business school students put a crisis webpage to link students with volunteer opportunities, and others approached administrative departments to see how they could help. But as the City organized its own efforts, the hours passed with no clear message of how individual students could help the relief efforts downtown.

This did not stop one Columbia College senior, who, with the help of her friends, took matters into her own hands. Talia Poy's uncle aunt and some family members had been in the World Trade Center and were lucky to escape alive. She needed to help in the rescue effort.

On Wednesday night Talia Poy and Zaheda Haidri, a college friend, went to the Javits Center (34th and West Side Highway), a command post the world trade center relief effort, determined to volunteer. With little direction from relief organizers, she saw what needed to be done and pitched in.

"There was really no one to tell you what to do, everyone was just doing what they could," said Poy. "When you see something that needs to be done down there, you do it."

Rubbing shoulders with exhausted relief workers, Talia stayed up all night unloading incoming supplies and organizing them for easy distribution. And as she worked, relief workers would return to Javits Center with eyes red and burning from smoke, heat and exhaustion. She realized there were a few needs that were not being met and went to Javits Center coordinators to get a list of needed supplies.

As dawn came, she shirked sleep to work on solving the next problem--where to get the supplies. Enlisting the help of another college friend, Andy Chung, phone calls were made to local businesses for donations, among them Eastern Mountain Sports and Duane Reade. The response was overwhelming. Eastern Mountain Sports donated heavy work gloves and Duane delivered a truck-load of Sudafed, masks, gloves, aspirin, naproxin sodium, Visine, and insoles that would help pad the feet of relief workers, whose work boot soles were melting because of the heat. Academy Hardware offered space to store supplies until they could be routed to the appropriate people.

Later in the afternoon, Columbia Security in cooperation with Facilities Management combined the boxes of donated supplies with the materials amassed from University service departments and other student donations, and delivered them to the New York Police Department for distribution to the downtown relief efforts. Thursday night, Talia and Andy were at Javits Center again, this time organizing supplies to keep them out of the rain.

Gene Awakuni, vice president for student services, said, "Talia is a testament to the commitment of our students who are willing help out in this time of great need."