Welcome

​​The return

I graduated from Rockledge High School 20 years ago. August 2025, I came back as a Speech-Language Pathologist — to the same buildings, the same hallways, working with kids walking the same path I had.

The school had just lost their social worker, who had been great. She'd built a food pantry, a clothes closet, and a quiet system of helping kids who needed it. When she left, it was all still sitting there waiting for someone to pick it up.
So I picked it up.

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I recruited two friends to help me run the pantry. We organized it, restocked it and had the doors back open for students. In October, a local realtor called the school to partner for a Thanksgiving basket program — looking for the previous social worker who ran the food pantry; the front office told her "Mrs. McBenton does that now." Then in November, another call came in about organizing Angel Tree gifts. Same answer: "Mrs. McBenton can help."

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I had inherited a job I didn't applied for; but I kept saying yes.

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The Crockpot Question

That December, my coworker and I were planning the Christmas distribution, figuring out the logistics of getting all of the gifts, to all of the kids. It was awesome the kids were getting gifts. They were very appreciative, but we kept thinking about the two weeks of school break ahead of them — about the empty pantries, about parents stretching nothing into something.

We started talking with one of the families we'd been helping. They told us the food was a great help, "But could we please have a pot to cook it in?"

That sentence reframed everything. We weren't just facing a food gap. We were facing a capability gap. Some of these families didn't have a working stove. Some were in motels. Handing them groceries without a way to cook them was, in some cases, just handing them another problem.

So we gave each of those thirty families a crockpot, two bags of pantry staples and 7 crockpot meals.

That program is now the backbone of how Rising Tide does food year-round.

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But the bigger thing the Crockpot Question taught me was this: I had been thinking I was meeting needs, but I was missing the mark. Because real help requires asking the family what they actually need — not assuming.

 

The day the system told me to wait three days

The moment I knew Rising Tide officially had to exist came not long after.

A freshman needed food for herself and her younger sibling. I went to the bookkeeper to pull money from the food pantry account — money I oversaw, designated for exactly this kind of thing.

She told me I couldn't have it -yet. The principal was out for three days and I'd need his signature to release the money. The funds also could only be spent at certain stores, on certain brands — for example; the district had partnerships with vendors like Pepsi, so we couldn't buy the cheaper store-brand water even when it would have stretched the dollar twice as far.

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A freshman needed food. The system said wait three days.

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Naturally, I called my grandmother, who got in her car, bought and delivered the groceries that afternoon. So they had food on that table that night. ​

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That was the day I knew I had to keep the money off campus. Not because the school was wrong, exactly — they were following district rules. But because students don't operate on a three-day signature timeline, and I refused to either.
 

The text message that started Rising Tide

The other thing that made Rising Tide possible was a friend who texted me one day in Early December and asked if I knew any families in need over the holidays. She'd had a busy season and wanted to give back, but didn't know where. I asked her if she had specifics — bills, food, clothes, what counted? She said: "Fun stuff is a need. We never get our childhood back. Wherever you think is the most helpful. I trust your judgement.- Please keep it anonymous" That's it. That the real text.

The next day, she sent me $3,000.

I started to text her every time I spent any of it. "Thank you so much for filing the fridge of a family who just moved here and is waiting on their benefits to transfer. You're the best" or "What?! It's not even 9am and you bought fidgets for kids to help with their anxiety so they don't self-harm? How cool are you?!" or "How did you know our most requested item was new underwear? Thanks for stocking a dozen pairs of each size. You're amazing!" She loved knowing the money was being used for good. And honestly, she's the reason I knew I could actually do this — that there were people outside my own family who would back this work as long as it was real.

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That's still how Rising Tide operates. Not through grants and red tape and three-day signature delays. Through trust — and through showing the people who give exactly where their dollars go.
 

How it actually works

What does Rising Tide looks like day-to-day? The honest answer is: a teacher texts me or the registrar stops me in the hallway; usually something like "Hey, I just heard about a student. Do you have a minute?"

I go to the student. I break down the story into tasks. I tell them what I heard, what we're going to do, and ask if there's anything else they need. Then I make it happen — sometimes by ordering a bike that afternoon, sometimes by calling a friend off-campus to drop groceries at a family's door because the family doesn't have a car.

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I tell every student the same thing: ask me, and let me say no. Don't assume I can't do it. I won't always be able to of course; I can't buy anyone a house. But I'd rather be the person you asked than the person you didn't.

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When the school's part-time social worker isn't on campus, I'm sometimes the person sitting with a kid who just needs to talk. I'm not a social worker- I don't have the credentials, and I'm not trying to take that role. But sometimes a teenager just needs an adult to hold space for them. One girl told me she'd never opened up that fast to anyone before. I'd done a puzzle while she talked, so she didn't have to feel the weight of direct eye contact.

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That's the work. Sometimes it's a $150 e-scooter. Sometimes it's new underwear. Sometimes it's a puzzle and a quiet room.

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Why we exist

There are fantastic organizations in Brevard County. They do amazing work. But they can't do it within the hour, and they can't always do it within the day.

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That's the gap Rising Tide closes.

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We don't do long-term solutions. We do same-day ones. We're not the answer — we're what shows up until the answer can.

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If that's a kind of work you want to be part of, I'd love to have you join us.

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— Kristin

Founder, Rising Tide