Daily Real Estate News  |  September 9, 2005  |   KW Searches for 256 Associates From Hurricane Areas Austin, Texas-based Keller Williams International is trying to determine the welfare of 256 sales associates and staff who are unaccounted for from Hurricane Katrina-ravaged areas of three Gulf Coast states. The company has set up a special section of its Web site (click “Tell us where you are”) and a toll-free number and is urging associates who haven’t already done so to check in and let the company know they’re OK and if they need any relief assistance. The toll-free number (866/591-2737) is staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week from the company’s headquarters office in Austin, Texas, says Bob Kilinski, co-owner of KW’s southeast region, which comprises 43 offices in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. For Kilinski, who is a native of New Orleans, the project is personal. The former owner of Keller Williams Realty Metairie, just outside of New Orleans, moved to Atlanta just three years ago. He was in his hometown just four hours before Hurricane Katrina struck evacuating his 94-year-old mother, Virginia Kilinski. She is now safe in Atlanta but he is concerned about the welfare of the 728 KW sales associates and staff who have been affected by the hurricane. He has volunteered to spearhead the company’s efforts to locate these associates and then help them rebuild their lives. Working with him is another KW broker from New Orleans, Vicki Morvant, who's coordinating the search for the missing. Kilinski says that of KW’s 480 offices, seven were located in the Gulf Coast region in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi and were “severely impacted” by the hurricane. Of the 728 sales associates and staff who worked in those seven offices, the company still has not accounted for the welfare of 256 of them and is eager to find them. The search is KW's No. 1 priority, Kilinski says. “We don’t know where they are, and we’re trying every avenue to reach them. We want to know that they’re safe somewhere.” Once the associates are located, Kilinski says the company will implement an ambitious long-term relief program he developed called “Heart 2 Heart,” which will ensure that all KW sales associates displaced by the hurricane will be able to rebuild their lives and their careers with the help of the company. “Heart 2 Heart” will work like this: Every KW market center in the United States and Canada that was not affected by the hurricane will adopt one to four displaced KW sales associates and their families. Each market center will be responsible for helping the adopted sales associates “to get their lives back to as near normal as quickly as possible,” Kilinski says. This involves finding creative ways to raise funds to provide the associates and their families with everything they need to rebuild their lives and reestablish their careers. “There are companies that are giving money—and we’re doing that, too—and that will help people a lot. But we’re also giving ‘CPR,’” he says, a metaphorical reference to explain the program's goal of resuscitating lives. “We wanted to find a way to organize this company’s heart to help these hearts that have been damaged.” KW has raised more than $1.2 million through its Keller Williams Realty Cares (KW Cares) fund and plans to use the money raised to provide immediate relief assistance, such as paying hotel bills, deposits on temporary apartments, food and clothing, medical bills, and other urgent needs, Kilinski says. But the assistance for KW associates won’t end there. “We’re a real estate company and we serve our clients, but that’s the external part of our company,” Kilinski says. “The internal part of our company—where our heart is—is to take care of our people who are in need. It’s about keeping people’s morale alive, giving them hope.” Hurricane Katrina Coverage Main Page To read more about Hurricane Katrina and NAR's relief efforts, go to REALTOR.org. —By Haley M. Hwang for REALTORŪ Magazine Online