He's got a drawl as long as a Tennessee sunset. They are hyperactive Cuban guys from Miami.
They hooked up in Haiti and now the heros of haiti are returning for an encore bus ride.
Grant Rimback, who runs an orphanage on the island nation, teamed up with the Saavadra Brothers to form a make-shift ambulance out of an old delivery truck right after a 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince.
The unlikely team supplemented by other Miami paramedics worked together for ten days, rescuing people dying on the streets and transporting patients to medical help.
They became fast friends and hatched a plan to try to get more vehicles and supplies to help the thousands of injured stuck on the island.
So Rimback found an old bus in Knoxville and drove it down to Miami. And Alex and Michael Saavedra used thier connections to fill it with supplies.
Now the team is back together again and headed back to Haiti to help.
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"I never thought it would grow to be this much and so many people would get involved," Michael Saavedra said.
It's the second vehicle the Saavedras have secured for the haitian people. They got the American Medical Academy to donate a blood bank truck to the cause.
On Manday, the core members of the makeshift "Haiti Amublance Service" spoke to Miami students about their daunghting experience. No question the ad hoc team saved lives and the Miami paramedics fell in love with Grant's orphanage and the 150 kids he cared for.
The students at Felix Varela High School collected enough boxes of relief supplies, clothes, shoes, eyeglasses, to fill up the school bus. The diligent work of the students had produced a windfall for the little orphanage.
At the student assembly, the group did not mince words about the horror they saw in Haiti. The paramedic team had taken pictures that were sobering, but they had also taken pictures of Grant's orphanage.
The bus will be used to transport Rimback's orphans and the supplies will be used at the orphanage as well as administered to earthquake victims "outside of the walls."
It was just like they planned it during those dark nights in Port-au-Prince.
Keep in touch and do something for the people in need. Mission accomplished.
