Tonya Coy had driven past homeless people living in an encampment under a highway underpass near her home in Austin, Texas, for more than six years when one day, in 107 degree heat, she came to visit them with a case of Gatorade and ice.

“In the 17 years I’ve lived here, I’ve passed the intersections many times each day, often seeing the same people camped there day after day, then year after year,” she said. That day when she came to visit, she met two people who called that bridge home and realized they were as much her neighbors as the people who lived on her block.

“I realized my neighbors were living in third world conditions within a mile of my home — and they needed help.”

Since she created Maximizing Hope in 2020, it has become an efficient team of volunteer “case workers,” well known since 2021 for the life-changing laundry program they run for unhoused people in partnership with HPF Hearts for the Homeless.