Caring for Camo: UA Community Rallies for Care-Package Drive

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Military deployments were nothing new for Miranda Cobb’s family.

The University of Alabama senior had just watched her father, Air Force Lt. Col. Paul Cobb, walk in from a three-month deployment, one of 12 during his career as an officer in the United States Air Force. Within 24 hours, her father was back on a plane to his next deployment, this time to aid in the United States’ response to 9/11.

“He was tasked with building a base within 24 hours overseas,” Miranda said. “Within that, me, my mother and my sister didn’t understand it, and my mom’s way of coping with it, and for us to understand it, was creating care packages.”

Miranda, at the time, was a Girl Scout. She, her mother and her sister packaged as many boxes of Girl Scout cookies as they could to send to her father and his squadron.

“For two weeks, they weren’t able to get supplies, so they were living off MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and Girl Scout cookies,” Miranda said. “My dad thought that was the funniest thing ever, and that got them to keep pushing on.”

Creating care packages for service members and veterans was, and still is, a Cobb family activity. When Miranda was a freshman at UA, she teamed with then UA student Baille Hooten to start a Caring for Camo chapter at UA.

Caring for Camo’s mission is similar to that of the Cobb family: create and distribute personalized care packages to military members stationed abroad.

They started from scratch – no funding and no members. But soon, Caring for Camo developed a fundraising strategy, organized a committee and sought volunteers on campus.

The group’s director of correspondence communicates with members of the community to get service members’ addresses and to find out the items they’d like to receive, with a particular focus on members of the UA community who are deployed.

“One guy wanted nothing but Twizzlers,” Miranda said. “He was so thrilled.”

Since its creation, Caring for Camo has distributed roughly 150 care packages across the world. They’ve had more than 500 volunteers and currently have more than 100 pounds of items – including everything from candy to magazines – ready to be packaged.

“The feedback we receive is really heart-warming,” Miranda said. “We try to send to active deployed military, but we also send to veterans who may be at the VA hospital – they still love getting packages, and this let’s them know they’re appreciated.”

Caring for Camo has held “Color Wars,” 5K runs and date auctions to raise money. Their fundraisers are mostly event-based to encourage community engagement between civilians and veterans.

Caring for Camo collects items by placing drop-boxes at sorority and fraternity houses and at different offices at The Ferguson Center. They typically have three package events per semester, including one this week to commemorate Veterans Day and another before Christmas.

“We recently had the largest care-package drive out of all five chapters in the United States,” Miranda said. “We’re hoping to exceed those expectations and keep growing. We’ve partnered with new organizations for fundraising events this year and have tremendous support from the University.

“I’m excited to pass this down to people on our executive board, people I’ve pulled in and taught them different skills to maintain the organization and move it forward.”