Paragraph 1: The Storm’s Arrival and the Call to Serve When the world tilts on its axis, it rarely gives notice. For Kerry Giles, the tilt came in the pitch-black, rain-lashed hours of September 27, 2024, when the phone shattered the fragile silence of a night that wasn’t—a night that had already transformed Western North Carolina into an inland ocean of churning mud and broken timber. Hurricane Helene, a monster that had merely grazed the Florida coast, had found the mountains and unleashed a biblical rage—up to thirty inches of rain in some hollows, wind gusts tearing the very air…

Imagine walking into a store and knowing instantly that the handbag on the shelf is the real deal. You can touch it, smell it, inspect the stitching, and ask a salesperson for proof of where it came from. Now think about shopping online, where you only have a handful of pixelated photos and a product description that could have been written by anyone, anywhere. The internet has made buying almost anything possible, but it has also made it frighteningly easy for counterfeiters to hide in plain sight. Fake luxury goods, sneakers, electronics, and even medicines flood online marketplaces, and the…