When Hurricane Helene pummeled the Florida Gulf Coast on Sept. 26, bringing with it deadly floodwaters and cutting off access to the barrier island of Madeira Beach, Steve Lambert made a decision.
“Our lights stayed on, and people had nowhere to go,” says the 53-year-old Cambria Hotel manager.
“They needed comfort,” he tells PEOPLE in an interview. “They needed a place to stay.”
So Lambert opened the hotel's doors to more than 125 locals who were displaced by Helene, including parents and children, law enforcement and 90-year-old veteran Vincent Cassar who, with his pet parrot, Sweetheart, had been trapped for two days inside his powerless condo nearby before being rescued by Lambert and another local resident Dan Miles, an Army veteran.
Miles says that Cassar initially “didn't think any hotel would take his bird, Sweetheart. He didn't want to leave Sweetheart. Vincent doesn't have any other family — but that bird, that is his family.”
“This is when I went back and I talked to Steve, and I said, 'Do you want to help save somebody?' And he said, 'Yes,' ” Cassar continues.
Courtesy Steve Lambert
In the aftermath of Helene — and even through the subsequent landfall of Hurricane Milton on Oct. 10 — Lambert cooked and provided clothes and other essentials for his guests.
He also focused on the one thing everyone had suddenly been robbed of: normalcy.
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Among other daily acts of kindness, Lambert helped guests celebrate birthdays, held trivia contests, gifted T-shirts and glow sticks and doted on the kids and pets who were also sheltering at the hotel.
“We said, 'Let's just pretend that things are going to be normal, minus this.' (Maybe) it's a false comfort, but it's there,” he explains.
Courtesy Steve Lambert
Miles, the veteran, says that “we have such great admiration for Steve and for everything he has done for us and for everyone else here.”
For Lambert, who volunteers weekly at a no-questions-asked food bank in St. Petersburg, Fla., the urge to help comes naturally. Growing up in Boston, he lived in 13 different foster homes and found solace in his first job — at a hotel.
“A neurologist will tell you, giving feels better than getting,” he says. “So when a storm comes, you don't have any other better time when you can help a life.”
Find out how you can help the victims of Hurricane Helene here.