In the boot camp of Category 4 hurricane recovery, items most of us are dimly aware of become the keys to recovery.

Storage bins, 27-gallon rascals with sunny yellow lids and I-mean-business black bases.

Mop kits — sealed, kitty litter-style buckets packed with gloves, squeegees, sponges, and mop and broom heads with screw-together segments for a full-length handle. 

Disposable diapers, jammed into puffy cubes that denote their size by one of several  ice-cream colors. 

Naples Pride volunteers have learned them all, as a community that has mobilized into a corps of grassroots help for Hurricane Ian victims.

"Dos o tres?" called Cori Craciun, holding up packages — not to denote how many, but what size, diaper — to a Palm Lake mother standing at the back of Pride's rental truck.

Pride has taken on bringing essential goods to Naples families who cannot come to get their own. That includes residents of Palm Lake, where residents lost cars when Hurricane Ian overwhelmed the mobile home park off U.S. 41 East in its surge eastward.

False alarm:Residents told to 'vacate' flooded mobile home park in East Naples

AND:Two weeks after Ian: On the long road to recovery, lots of bumps, but clearing ahead

Many lost their kitchen appliances, too. Although a tented gathering spot in the park has cans of soups and collard greens, the Heater EX meals, dinners packaged on self-heating trays, that arrive with Pride volunteers go fast. 

Palm Lake is among the working class neighborhoods in the crevices of Naples. They're tucked behind other businesses, invisible to the city. Yet they are cocoons to their working-class residents. Place like Linwood Avenue, River Park and Bonita Shores, the homes along Estey Avenue — their residents have forged a community spirit that sends neighbors to tell others the truck is here. 

Few speak English in Palm Lake. Many are parents with young children. When a Naples Daily News photographer's car stopped in a driveway, her explanation of following the Pride distribution was met with hope: "Do you have diapers for my baby?"

This place has become a regular stop for the Pride truck, which rumbles in on a sticky Wednesday afternoon. Its sole identifying mark was the dappled butterfly U-Haul has stenciled on the sides for a Venture America graphics series.

Soon it will be surrounded with residents who make short work of unloading its essentials. When all the goods — bags of shampoo, razors and soap, blocks of diapers, toilet paper, children's items — disappear from the filled storage bins, they will be given away, too.

"So they can put their clothes in (them)," Craciun explained. "All their stuff is on the street, so they need somewhere to put what they've salvaged." 

Pride is used to fighting for itself. The LGBTQ+ support organization has dealt with antagonistic Florida laws, attempts to shut down its annual celebration at Cambier Park, even purging of school library books that deal with its issues. But it turned to fighting for others after Hurricane Ian, beginning with the hard-hit Shadowlawn neighborhood surrounding its quarters. 

 "We can't just sit there. We needed to do something," declared Craciun, president of Pride. So Pride dug into its own funds, renting the butterfly-bearing truck, buying water at Costco the day after the hurricane. "They had fans on sale. So I got a palette of fans. I got a palette of bins. Paper towels. Clorox. We bought a bunch of stuff." 

"We started Saturday. We were already in the streets. In the beginning, there was nobody," Craciun recalled of neighborhoods like Estey Avenue and the side arteries to Palm Street. 

The pressing need, she said, is "mattresses. People sleep on the floor." New, fresh pillows are high on the list too: "We don't want to give people used things that aren't clean."

As a shirtsleeve administrator, Craciun has been less than impressed with the state of county emergency preparations. One of her first requests was to Collier County Emergency Management to find water for people. She recalls being told they had none.

"I was thinking, 'Oh my God, you're in the middle in hurricane season and you don't have water anywhere?'" she asked. Further, she said, any evacuation help for places like Palm Lake needed county assistance: "They know where the water will come in. They have maps."

More help:Where to give, get food and other supplies for Hurricane Ian survivors

Volunteers from Florida's east coast LGBT+ communities have sent cleaning supplies. They show up in carloads to help clean out damaged homes. Pride has responded to  pleas for help from as far away as Cape Coral. Its supplies regularly make their way to Collier's northernmost victims, residents in the Ian-pummeled homes of Bonita Shores and Little Hickory Shores.

Megan Titcomb is typical of a Pride volunteer, a Bonita Shores resident with a family member who is LGBTQ+, and who saves gas for Pride's Butterfly Express by bringing her own truck down to the center. Her Shores community club will hand out the supplies to those who need them in the club's parking lot or drive around to the homebound with help. Its own building was ruined by Ian.

Titcomb spent her 9-year-old's birthday dinner hour serving chili-mac to those among the 500 households who could come to the parking lot.

"We had a cake and candles for him, though," she emphasized. The same thing would happen with her 17-year-old's birthday the next day.

Titcomb credits Pride with having been the most helpful with supplies. And in turn, Craciun says groups like Titcomb's have been effective distribution arms. 

"The grassroots community is where we've gotten most of our help," she said. Still, they rely on the Red Cross and World Central Kitchen for hot meals.

"We went out first with the food, and then we gave Red Cross our routes," she said. The organization took on a good deal of distribution, although Pride still delivers some meals from World Central Kitchen. 

"It is amazing how everyone got together to help each other," said Craciun, gratified. 

The work was taking a toll on Pride's funds, however. The group, working with its own advocacy site — "Started after all that backlash," Craciun said of the conservative condemnation of its public events —  tapped into neighborhood networks, and some donations have started to come in. On Tuesday, an anonymous donor came forward with $25,000.

For the first time, Craciun, a no-nonsense, get-it-done leader, loses her voice. Then she regains composure.

"I was hoping if people see that they will just donate more," she said. That $25,000 will buy them 100 mattresses — genuine, queen-size mattresses — but it's only part of a great need.

"What gets me is people come in here," she said, gesturing to boxes filled with clothing, "and they take two of this, two of that, because they want to leave things for others. These people have nothing and still they're thinking of others. It makes you want to cry."

Harriet Howard Heithaus covers arts and entertainment for the Naples Daily News/naplesnews.com. Reach her at 239-213-6091.

Naples Pride has established two location where people who want to help can give:

Monetary donations: secure.givelively.org

Donation of items: Amazon.com has a Hurricane Ian Relief List of items it needs that members can access