AFTER THE STORM: HOW THE TEAM USA FAMILY LIFTED UP ALUMNI AFFECTED BY CATASTROPHIC HURRICANES

When Nia Abdallah returned to her house after the flood, she found traces of water from corner to corner, like an unwelcome visitor.

Floors were soaked. Puddles settled in kitchen drawers. The walls were beginning to mold, and the smell permeated the air. Fish were swimming in her backyard pool, displaced like she was by the wrath of Hurricane Harvey.

Abdallah, who in 2004 became the first woman from the United States to medal in taekwondo at the Olympic Games when she won silver in Athens, had been through this before.

In fact, she’d just finished remodeling and repairing her house from the last devastating flood that her neighborhood in northwest Houston, Texas, experienced.

“The water got about thigh high within the house and kind of ruined everything we’d just fixed,” Abdallah said. “Cars were messed up. Around us, we actually didn’t get hit the worst. A little north of us, water was actually to the traffic lights.”

Abdallah is one of about a dozen Olympians and Paralympians in the Houston area who were directly affected by Harvey that received a grant from the Olympians for Olympians Relief Fund – the OORF. 

When American Olympians and Paralympians fall on hard times, through no fault of their own, the Fund provides them with monetary support – donated entirely by other members of the U.S. Olympic family – and a gesture of solidarity.

“When it first happened, I didn’t even think about asking the Olympians for anything,” Abdallah said. “At the time, we were just trying to get ourselves back on our feet again … We didn’t have to ask for it; they were saying they were there to help, and they presented the help to us, and I thought that was incredible.”