Charlie:
Welcome to Comfort on Porpoise, sponsored by Dolphin Cooling and Heating who have been providing 24/7 Comfort on Porpoise since 1998. Well, welcome back listeners. Charlie McDermott here with Lauren for the Comfort on Porpoise Podcast. Lauren, how you doing?
Lauren:
I’m good. How are you today, Charlie?
Charlie:
Doing terrific. So last time we spoke you had talked about this cool contest, I had to keep like checking my hearing. I’m like, what? What are you doing? And you have since fulfilled, you’ve announced the winner. So let’s back up and for our listeners who didn’t hear what was going on, just so, I don’t know, if he’d do it again, sometime in the future, they can make sure they get in on this. But what did you have going on?
Lauren:
So in the beginning of January, at the start of the year, our team here at Dolphin had gotten together and decided, you know, what can we do? We wanted to give back. The Southwest Florida community was very devastated by Hurricane Ian and so we put together this AC giveaway.
The deal was anyone could enter to receive the giveaway, we wanted to help somebody in need, if we could, people just could go online to our website or through our social media, fill out this form with some minimal information about themselves, and they would go into a drawing. And we were going to select someone at random in early March to receive a free AC system for their house.
So we did end up selecting a winner, chosen at random and this woman that was selected actually, she did not nominate herself. Cecause people could go in and could also submit entries for people that you knew. She got nominated by two of her friends. They both submit on her behalf and her story was really, very touching.
She’s a single mom. She lives in Naples, Florida. And what they shared with us was that by trade, this woman is a welder. A Very good welder, from what I understand. She goes to work every day and her her work environment is very hot. I mean, it could get up to 95-96 degrees inside the room that she’s working in. And they shared with us that, and I can’t imagine how she did this, but this woman had, has had no AC in her home for nearly two years.
Her AC system died. She didn’t have the cash to pay for it up front. She was having issues getting financing in order to finance a new AC unit for her home. So she was just toughing it out. And basically strategically placed fans around her home to try and circulate the air, but had no AC.
I think it was in the summer of 2021 is when her AC died and she hadn’t had it since then. So she goes to work, works in a very hot environment as a welder all day, and then she comes home and her home is hot. And to top this all off, she’s a single mom, her children older, but still single hard working mom, and she has MS.
So she’s been managing to sustain all of this and live in her home with no AC. So we were so excited! Her her two friends had nominated her and we reached out to her friends and said listen, we gave them a heads up. Your friend was selected, she’s gonna get the AC system, but we want to surprise her. So we wanted to make you aware we’re going to show up. We’re going to call her and tell her that she was one of our finalists, and we just need to come out to see the system she needs so we can have the information should she win so we’ll be prepared.
One of her girlfriends went out and met us out there at her house at the day we were coming out to do this site visit just to survey what was needed. We got out there it was myself, my brother Greg, who’s one of the other owners here and then our service manager Roger, and we brought balloons and we have these little dolphin stuffed animals with a bandana that says dolphin cooling and heating on them tied the balloons to it. So we got there, introduced ourselves, chatted with her a little bit, didn’t say anything at first, and then I went over to the truck and took the balloons out to give them to her and I said, we fibbed a little. We are here to see what you need. But that’s because you won and you’re gonna get the new AC system. And she immediately just burst into tears. It was really special moment.
Luckily, her girlfriend was filming so she got it on camera. Anyone who’s interested, if you go to our Facebook or our Instagram pages under dolphin cooling, you’ll be able to you can see the videos and watch that interaction unfold for yourself. She was so excited, she shared a little bit more about her story. She was just overjoyed with the thought of finally, I’m going to I’m going to be able to come home, my home is going to be air conditioned, like I’m not going to leave a 95 degree workplace to come home to a 90 degree house, especially in the dead of summer.
Within a week, we went back out there, we installed her brand new AC system for her. So she’s now very comfortable in her house with AC. And it was so kind her girlfriend had reached out to us after and she said I just want to tell you that after you guys left, Shane is the name of the woman who won. Shane said to me, I can’t believe it, you know, miracles really do happen.
So it was it was really great. It was an awesome experience. We felt really blessed to be able to do that for somebody else and pay forward for someone who really needed it. And we’ve already talked a bit as a team, and I can’t confirm with 100% definite, but it’s very likely that people will probably see this from us every year. That that we may continue doing this and this might have just been a first annual type of event.
So it was it was really an exciting experience and she’s been super happy. You know, we followed up with her after we went out I went out that day that we did the install and visited with her again on site, make sure she was comfortable and happy with everything. She’s now had AC for pretty much a month at this point, so she’s she’s very happy.
Charlie:
I’ll bet. And yeah, we haven’t even gotten even close to the peak heat season. What a difference it made already and it’s gonna make then. How do you even you work in an environment like that, and usually if you don’t have AC, at least when you go to work, you can cool off but, my Lord, 24/7 She was in the heat.
Lauren:
Yes, constant. I don’t know how she did it, especially in the dead of summer and trying to sleep in that at night. No idea, but God bless this woman she she did, you know, you have to do sometimes what you have to do and she did. So it was awesome to be able to gift her with an AC and so she can have comfort on porpoise in her house now, which is nice.
Charlie:
There you go and you know, the wonderful thing about that is you make, certainly, her feef good and that goodness, you know, probably every time she looks at the thermostat outside and sees it in the 90s or even 80s she’s gonna think about you guys, but but also your team. I can just see, you know, for your listeners, you can’t see Lauren, you can see her in the video, but no, just you sharing that story. You could you could tell how good that felt and I know with Greg and the rest of your team, I mean, your installation team and all that was just probably a special project for everyone.
Lauren:
It was. It was a whole whole team effort. Everybody participated and everybody felt really good to play a role in it.
Charlie:
It’s one of those situations in life where, yeah, we had a terrible hurricane rip through southwest Florida. But you know, a lot of good things have come from it and you guys are a prime example of that.
Lauren:
Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie:
Thank you for coming up with this and investing the time and dollars and everything else and helping others. That’s great. That’s all it takes. You know?
Lauren:
It’s true. It is. So we’re, we’re hoping, hopefully everybody will hear about this again next year. So keep an eye out, check our website, follow our social media. If we do it, we’ll be posting it. So people are aware and give plenty of time.
Charlie:
And hopefully, we won’t have to tie it to another hurricane.
Lauren:
Nope, no, hopefully not. Hopefully it’ll just be for the purpose of trying to pay it forward and help a community who is done so much for us, to help our business grow and to be able to pay it back.
Charlie:
Good stuff. Lauren, thanks for updating us there and, again, for all you and your team have done and continue to do and southwest Florida. And we’ll look forward to talking more in the next episode.
Lauren:
Fantastic. Thanks, Charlie. It’s always good to see you and thank you to everybody listening today.
Charlie McDermott:
Thanks for listening to Comfort on Porpoise to learn more about our sponsor Dolphin Cooling and Heating visit www.dolphincooling.com or call 239-596-9044. That’s 239-596-9044.