08/13/2026
We want you to know about Woody.
When Woody evacuated his Suncrest-area home, he didn’t know what he would find when he came back.
The fire came within about two blocks of his house. At his daughter’s urging, Woody left and spent the next three days with family, including his granddaughter, who was about to turn 2.
“We just played,” he said. “Got on the floor, played.”
His home survived. But Woody knew many of his neighbors were facing a much different reality.
In the days after the fires, he stopped by a food bank in the Tum Tum area to see how things were going. Concerned by how little food he saw available, he left $20 and started thinking about what else he could do.
That instinct followed him to the Disaster Assistance Center at Shadle Park High School, where Second Harvest was among the organizations providing resources for people affected by the fires.
Woody didn’t need food assistance himself. But he knew some of his neighbors might. So when he picked up a box of food, he was already thinking about where it could go next.
There was the widow across the street. There were other neighbors nearby. His plan for the food was simple: “I’ll just go out in my front yard and see if anybody needs anything.”
Woody has deep roots in the Spokane area. He worked for Albertsons for 38 years before retiring and also has experience in search and rescue. That experience helped shape his belief that people who step up to help others also need to take care of themselves so they can keep showing up.
Woody knows the road ahead will be much harder for neighbors who lost their homes. He hopes they give themselves time to recover and heal.
Still, what he has witnessed since the fires has reinforced something else.
“There’s so much good out there,” he said.
Woody doesn’t make much of his own part in it. He admits he’s “not much about warm fuzzies and hugs and stuff like that.”
For him, helping is simpler than that.
“You always hope that the things that you do help someone, and that’s really all you need to get out of it,” Woody said. “If you can help someone and then they can help someone.”
