At 5’5” and 110 pounds, Katie McMullen does not register as a powerful woman at first glance. But the 38-year-old A-B Tech student has recently been recognized by USA Today as one of 61 “Women of the Year” for her work running a disaster distribution center on her front lawn. When Helene hit Swannanoa, McMullen helped neighbors by transforming her yard into an outdoor food pantry that housed donations from food to diapers and medical supplies. She also put her own life on the line to save a woman whose trailer was swept away in flood waters.
McMullen knows firsthand the importance of nutrition and sustenance. When she was 19, a bout with malnutrition left her body struggling to function. Since then, she has lived with a feeding tube that pumps nutrition into her body around the clock.
When Helene hit, five nearby dams broke, and water flooded the basement of the Swannanoa home McMullen shares with her mother and her dog. Many of the surrounding homes and businesses washed away, but the McMullen house, perched on a small hill, survived. The first thing McMullen did when she saw water flooding into the basement was save her own medical supplies, including the nutrient liquid and the pump, which she later was able to charge in her car. Then, McMullen, who works as a dog groomer, turned to helping neighbors. Slipping on a backpack and boots, she spent the next four days trekking through the mud, distributing bottles of water to neighbors and charging their phones in her car. Soon, she upgraded to a beach wagon filled with supplies she got at distribution stations that had sprung up in a 15-mile radius.
It was on one of these walks that she spotted a woman clinging to a tree branch not far from her house. A group of men stood in the water below her, holding ropes and life jackets, seemingly unsure what to do next. McMullen, who worked for several years as a firefighter and EMT, could see the woman’s head was nodding, signaling she was about to slip into a coma. (She later learned the woman had been there for 14 hours.) She asked one of the men for the life jackets and some rope.
She chuckles when she recalls his response: “Can you, like, get somebody strong to do this?” he asked.
“I was like get out of my way,” she said, dryly. “I love the underestimation; awesome.”
McMullen did a quick estimate of the situation. The water was over her head, 14 feet deep, she would later learn. The woman was slight, smaller than her. Surely, she could manage. Tying a piece of long rope to a truck, McMullen swam out to the tree. Hoisting the woman onto her own chest, she then kicked her way through the water on her back. Finding a nearby house empty, McMullen wrapped the woman in a mylar quilt and waited with her and the woman’s husband till firefighters arrived in a rescue boat. “I knew she was going to be safe,” she said. “They had gotten her into a sling so she could be airlifted.”
In the months since the hurricane, McMullen has experienced some health complications from being exposed to toxic flood waters, including a painful case of pancreatitis and toenails that continue to fall off. Still, she considers herself lucky that her stoma, the port in her stomach where the feeding tube enters her body, was not infected.
When asked if she was ever afraid for her own life during her rescue, McMullen pointed out that she exercises regularly and keeps in good physical shape. “Dying was not an option,” she said. “Nobody was dying.”
Several days after Helene hit Swannanoa, supplies began showing up on McMullen’s front lawn. Over subsequent weeks, strangers from near and far dropped off boxes of food, water, diapers, and even medical supplies. Her yard, the only undamaged one in the area, became the go-to hub for supplies. McMullen, who had lost her job at a dog kennel after Helene, embraced her new role as a disaster relief worker. She has worked on her front lawn distributing supplies steadily for the six months since the hurricane.
In her free time, McMullen is creating a home dog kennel of her own, which she hopes to open soon. She also has a hobby creating “tubey teddies” for children she meets online who have feeding challenges. She buys stuffed animals and embellishes them by attaching feeding tubes in just the right places to match their owners. “This way, they have a friend that looks like them,” she said.
McMullen, who previously attended firefighting classes at A-B Tech, hopes to pursue an Occupational Therapy degree and specialize in helping children who have feeding tubes. “Coming out of the hospital with a feeding tube can be alarming, “she said. “…It looks like [the tube]is going to hurt, but it doesn’t.”
In the meantime, she’s been enjoying getting to know area neighbors through the supply center, where she’s organized a Christmas toy giveaway and a bike donation event for kids. She said that though the area still has a long way to go, spring has brought with it a feeling of hope. The Swannanoa bridge was recently restored, and with the warm weather here, children are playing outside again.
“Kids need to be kids,” she said. “Going through something like this takes away the ability to be a child in the moment. Watching them riding their bikes and feel safe playing is beautiful."
Read the story in USA Today at https://www.usatoday.com/women-of-the-year-2025