McKinney Moms Band Together To Give Homeless Man And His Dog A New Life
Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook | Twitter
ROCKWALL (CBSDFW) - When a homeless McKinney man and his dog were saved from flood waters by a swift water rescue team last November, that dog's grateful smooch for a firefighter captured hearts.
But since then the pair has fallen on hard times again, living outdoors in increasingly harsh conditions.
It was difficult for Edward Emmerich to find a shelter that would take him and his Belgian Malinois, Duke, and soon they were back to struggling to survive living outdoors in the cold weather.
"These are conditions that will start to kill people. You know, you can freeze to death, hypothermia," Emmerich said.
He started a gofundme page and posted links to it all over social media, but it wasn't until a group of McKinney moms started sharing his story that his fortune suddenly changed. Two of the moms got him a hotel room, and soon donations were filling it up.
"The McKinney moms just... I mean they literally blew it up within the first 24 hours. I had more clothes that I could put on. I had extra tents. I had sleeping bags. I had more food than we could both eat," Emmerich said.
"McKinney is a loving place. Most of us don't turn a cold shoulder to somebody who needs help," McKinney mom Kathy Moreno insisted.
Moreno's Facebook post got more than 500 comments, and supplies were just the beginning.
"I just saw that everybody was talking about blankets and clothes and things like that, and the only thing I thought was, we have this house sitting empty," McKinney mom Tiffany Vernon said.
The next thing Emmerich knew he had an offer to act as caretaker for the home that the group of moms quickly began furnishing.
"I was just 36 hours ago trying to figure out where my next meal was going to come from. 36 hours ago I was worried about freezing to death," Emmerich said standing in the living room of his new home.
Over the last two years, Duke has grown accustomed to living outdoors, so the 10-acre property, complete with its own pond couldn't be better for him.
"There's no way you can actually express it and the appreciation I have for these people that have now almost become my family," Emmerich said.
That group of moms collected so many supplies that they now plan to distribute them to more homeless people in need, and Edward tells us he's so grateful that he wants to pay it forward and help the group advocate for the homeless.
You can find Edward Emmerich's and Duke's gofundme page here.
(©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)