After Hurricane Isabel hit on Sept. 18, Rose felt very little was being done to help this isolated coastal community, and she wasn't about to keep quiet with so many people in need.
Although the Salvation Army had set up shop a 10 minute drive away, the town's mostly elderly residents had little way of accessing food aid and bare necessities like toilet paper.
So Rose, who lives about 15 miles to the south in Gloucester, called her friend Danny Styron in Stacy and asked him to help her open the town's volunteer fire department as a base to hand out meals.
``You know that saying, 'If you build it ... ?' Well, they came,'' Rose said.
Now, two weeks after Isabel, Rose and Styron say they are struggling to keep Stacy and its environs on the relief radar, nagging the American Red Cross to keep the food coming, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to keep services running.
``The Red Cross wants to pull out tomorrow,'' Styron said Wednesday. ``What? I've still got hundreds of hungry people here.''
FEMA planned to open a million-dollar mobile disaster relief center Thursday on nearby Cedar Island. Spokeswoman Barb Sturner said it would include people to help assess residents' needs and send for items such as housing trailers and phones.
But Rose said nobody had told the area's 300-plus residents.
``Maybe we should get in the fire truck and say it over the megaphone,'' she said. ``That's how we told them we'd set up a feeding center.''
Stacy is one of a handful of tiny towns along state Highway 70 as it winds to an end in inland Carteret County's easternmost tip. The area, which includes the Cedar Island National Wildlife Refuge, is tucked behind Cape Lookout and Core Banks, at the southern end of the Outer Banks.
Isabel gave it a beating. Styron said many homes were damaged _ more than 71 in Stacy alone are uninhabitable _ but people are living in them anyway.
``I just don't have a choice,'' 87-year-old Robena Wade said as she used her cane to pick through the brush and debris around her house.
Piles of antique dressers, waterlogged photo albums and molding floorboards sprout along N.C. 70. Discarded refrigerators are in the streets, some spray-painted with FEMA identification numbers, others with messages.
``Welcome,'' read one in Stacy, ``take what you want.''
Across the street, seven inmates from the Carteret County Correctional Center hoisted mildewed mattresses and broken mirrors from an elderly woman's house. They had been dispatched to do relief work by the state Office of Emergency Management.
``The federal government is trying to get programs together, but the state's taking care of its people this way,'' correctional officer Gavin DeMurry said as he kept watch over his charges. ``I guess this is a creative solution. And the guys feel good.''
Styron, who lost much of his own property to flooding, spent much of Wednesday negotiating with the Red Cross to keep the meal service going.
Just before the evening meal, Styron got word that Red Cross meals would be coming from another kitchen, but they would still be coming.
``Thank goodness we've still got food,'' he said.
