As Their East Village Church Burned, a Congregation Asked: How Can We Help the Women Next Door?

...Middle Collegiate members hurried to the scene as they heard the news. Katrina Monzón, an East Village local, arrived after 7 a.m., as did spouses Susan Davis and Claudia Slacik who live near Gramercy Park. They quickly learned where the Hopper residents were — and that they had left home nearly empty-handed.

“We thought, well, let’s go take care of our neighbors,” said Davis. “We went and bought some stuff, and we didn’t know what really to buy.”

Slacik chimed in: “Twenty-two tubes of toothpaste. Twenty-two boxes of Kleenex. Twenty-two bottles of hand sanitizer.”

They drove to Avenue B and found the women in a room just off the building entrance, looking “the most depressed and despondent,” Davis said...