Before she died last February from cancer, Claire Collins decided that any money from the sale of her mobile home would be used to assist people in need. The modest amount – $180,000 – became her way of giving back.

A couple years earlier, Collins sought help from a neighbor at The Groves mobile home community in Irvine. She like to keep to herself, but, with a broken water heater, she needed help.

In her 80s and deep in credit card debt, Collins endured four months without hot water – and the ability to take a shower – before reaching out to a neighbor. The help she ended up getting led not only to a new water heater and other repairs to her home, but eventually to the establishment of the Claire D. Collins Helping Hands Foundation.

And through a $38,000 award from the foundation, the woman who once had no hot water to shower has made it possible, posthumously, for the faith-based nonprofit Family Promise of Orange County to provide hot showers to homeless families.

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