‘She just kept on going’: School secretary hailed as hero for Helene relief efforts
By Bill Evans
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FAIRVIEW, North Carolina (WLOS) — At Fairview’s Cane Creek Middle School, Front Desk Secretary Brittany Killian provides service with a smile.
“She is the front line for the school,” said Principal Andrea Britt. “She does it all.”
Killian’s days start at 7:30 a.m., greeting visitors, meeting parents dropping off forgotten musical instruments and afterschool snacks for sports, and checking in tardy students, among other things.
It all makes for action-packed mornings.
“I stay busy,” she said with a laugh.
But her actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene drew national attention.
Killian and her family found their call to serve the morning of the storm. Her husband Matt runs a grading and excavation company and he got to work repairing washed-out roads in Fairview and Garren Creek. Brittany delivered food, medicine and organized supply drives for families isolated from the storm’s wrath, often hiking to homes, or hitching rides with first responders.
When she was able to drive up ravaged roads to help survivors, it was in an old Subaru she nicknamed “Trusty.”
“He wasn’t in the best of shape before the storm,” Killian chuckled. “I definitely destroyed him, to put it lightly.”
She frequently added oil and water to the over-heated Trusty, just to keep the car running.
When ABC’s Good Morning America came to Asheville for a live show six months after the hurricane, a sponsor, Hertz Car Sales, wanted to donate a 2024 Toyota RAV4 to a deserving volunteer. Killian was the clear choice to get the new set of wheels.
“Right after the storm happened, she had on backpacks. Her family — they were going in checking on people,” explained Britt. “I’m sure she was exhausted, but she didn’t stop. She just kept on going.” “We love it to pieces,” Killian said of the Toyota. “I hope to have it for a really long time.”
But storm relief and manning the front desk at Cane Creek aren’t Killian’s only calls to serve the Fairview community.
“Keep him in, keep him in! Get low, get low!,” she yells from the edge of the school’s wrestling mat.
That’s right, Killian is also the head wrestling coach at Cane Creek, one of just a few women in the state to coach the sport which she was introduced to as a senior at A.C. Reynolds High. She was one of two girls to wrestle on the team in 2007-2008, and almost always competed against boys.
“I was a little crazy,” she laughed.
Killian coaches her seventh-grade son Trevor at Cane Creek. Freshman Robert is on the Reynolds High wrestling team. Her sixth grade daughter Ava stays busy with wrestling and youth soccer.
The RAV4 gets a lot of use with service projects and shuttling the Killian children to school and sports activities, but Brittany says she’s not altogether comfortable with all the attention that has come from her nationwide recognition.
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