Enlarge Janis Caracappa and a bag of the hats and gloves that her group has collected.

Posted: February 5th, 2010 Greg Lacour

Crossroads Charlotte occasionally spotlights individuals who are improving the city’s social capital.



Janis Caracappa and her husband, Steve, began collecting clothes for the homeless in early January, after their daughter bought a cup of coffee for a homeless man in uptown Charlotte. They decided to follow up the following week by bringing coffee and sausage biscuits to the cold and hungry on the street. Then they took it further. On Jan. 5, the Caracappas named their fledgling charity Hats & Gloves, set up a Facebook page and began handing coats and blankets to the homeless wherever they found them. In less than a month, the Facebook page has collected 356 members, Janis and Steve have set up a Web site, and they’ve forged a partnership with a Methodist church in Marion whose pastor is trying to run a similar charity in the N.C. mountains. “There’s just so much need,” Janis Caracappa says. “All of our friends who’ve joined us on Facebook have said, ‘Well, we wanted to help but just didn’t know where to start.’ And neither did we, except we took that first ride and couldn’t look away.”

Why she does what she does? “It’s hard to sleep at night when it’s 10 degrees and you know people are outside sleeping in that. We could be there one day ourselves.”



What's next?/ She doesn’t know. “We’re just kind of following it wherever it goes. We’re not even 30 days into the whole thing. We just had no clue this would be so huge in this short a period of time.”