No red tape with this tsunami aid

Like countless Americans, Seattle's Ron Rubin and Rebecca Beddall were touched by the tsunami and wondered: How can we help?

There's the conventional route of giving money to relief groups, which then buy food or medicine and try to get it to the people in need. These two real-estate agents, vacationing together in Thailand when the tsunami hit Dec. 26, came up with a more direct approach.

They're handing out cash.

They stayed in Thailand and now spend their days visiting relief camps, hospitals or flattened towns. When they meet someone who lost a home, job or relatives to the waves, they give them $200 to $400 — equivalent to a few months' salary for most Thai villagers.

They have doled out $13,000 of the $25,000 donated by friends and co-workers in Seattle.

They are running what amounts to a guerrilla charity. There is zero overhead or red tape. They aren't working with established relief groups, have no guidelines for dispensing aid and never ask how the money will be used.

Rubin, 35, and Beddall, 34, got the idea because the tsunami washed away all their belongings as they huddled on a hotel roof. Later, a stranger gave them money so they could eat.

"It was only $25, but for a short time we had nothing, and it meant so much to us," Rubin said by phone from Thailand.

He said that for all the focus on emergency relief, it's cash that best can improve the lives of many survivors now.

But cash gifts are frowned on by conventional charities, which favor providing services. Giving out cash is kind of the tsunami-relief equivalent of handing spare change to transients on Seattle streets.

Yet there's an undeniable immediacy, a purity, to what Rubin and Beddall are doing.

On Monday they visited a hospital in Thailand's hardest-hit zone, Khao Lak.

"A man in his 40s lost both his wife and 5-year-old son. They were found holding on to each other under the sand," e-mails Beddall.

Beddall gave him $400. Through an interpreter, the man told her: "Deep in my heart I want to say thank you for your kindness. ... You have given a man an opportunity and direction when he didn't have any."

A mother who lost her 3-year-old daughter saw the money, cried and said nobody had given her anything of value before.

A 39-year-old restaurant owner lost his wife, their cafe and all 10 staffers. All he has left is his 14-year-old son. When Beddall gave him money, the man said he wanted to cry but could not in front of his son.

Rubin said there is an arbitrary nature to the giving, that "whoever we bump into, if they're in need, they get help."

But it's balanced by the fact that he's 100 percent certain all the aid goes directly to people who desperately need it.

"You can look into their eyes and see it," he said.

Which of the big charities can say that?

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday.