Kate Wolfe, a 52-year-old surgical nurse who works at a private hospital in Santa Fe, leaves in a week for Haiti.

The Internet and a desire to help those devastated by the country's recent earthquake connected her with a Santa Fe family that is helping her get there.

"I just feel this really strong call to go there," said Wolfe, who works at Physicians Medical Center in Santa Fe.

"I don't know why except that I know I have a big devotion to Mother Mary and she wants me to be in Haiti. I'm not crazy. I'm a nurse and I can do nursing things there."

Wolfe said after she heard about the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 150,000 people, she wanted to help but didn't know how.

"I started Googling and Googling and Googling," said Wolfe.

Those hours at the computer led Wolfe to the Facebook page of Heart to Heart, a Kansas-based nonprofit that organizes volunteer and supply efforts in 60 countries around the world.

As soon as she filled out the volunteer application, Wolfe began trying to raise money — she'll have to pay her own airfare to the Dominican Republic plus $900 for ground transportation and lodging.

Wolfe said she constantly uses Craigslist to buy, sell or give items away. So one night she posted a plea, "Please help me go to Haiti."

When she woke the next morning, she had a message from 47-year-old Donald Baca. In it, Baca — who retired a few years ago from the state General Services Department, where he was a computer technician — offered to put her $500 plane ticket on his credit card.

"I could hardly bring myself to look at the devastation that they were showing on TV," said Baca. "I just thought, well, let's see if we could help some way or another. This was kind of more hands-on as opposed to having to text something on your phone. Most importantly, I wanted my daughter and granddaughter to get involved in the fundraising part of it so they could feel the experience of helping others."

Baca said he asked his daughter Christina Baca, 15, a student at Santa Fe High School, and granddaughter Adonica Baca, 10, who attends Chaparral Elementary, if they wanted to help raise the funds for the plane ticket. He told them he would charge the ticket on his credit card if they agreed to try to get donations to pay for the ticket.

If he doesn't raise enough to pay himself back, Baca said, "that's OK, too. We just want to help."

If he raises more than $500 for the ticket, Baca said, he'll donate it to Wolfe to help pay for her other expenses.

"We're not even a fourth of the way there yet, but it's not going to be hard based on the response we've gotten so far," he said. "And I have five brothers and sisters and a lot of other relatives."

Baca is also making homemade bread to give to people who make donations. A former member of the New Mexico National Guard, Baca has also donated to boxes of Meals Ready to Eat to Wolfe, who must bring her own food with her to Haiti.

"But it's really not about us," he said. "It's about her. She's the one willing to go over there and put herself in harm's way. It's uncertain and unsure what the conditions will be for her over there, and she's willing do that."

Wolfe said she's not afraid for her physical safety. But she is nervous. "Because I don't know what it will be like," she said. "Will there be snakes? I read online that they couldn't drop an aid shipment in one field because it was infested with tarantulas. I'm 52 years old, I'm not looking forward to sleeping on the ground."

Pete Brumbaugh, a spokespersons for Heart to Heart, said Wolfe will most likely be working in a tent city that has sprung up in the National Stadium in Port-au-Prince, trying to prevent minor injuries from becoming major ones. "Nurses are particularly helpful in wound care," Brumbaugh said.

She may also become part of an "extreme team" of two doctors, two nurses and an operations employee who go to outlying areas to provide medical care alongside aid workers from foreign governments.

At night, she'll sleep in a seminary where Heart to Heart has been able to obtain lodging for her and other medical volunteers.

"It's a pretty challenging environment," Brumbaugh said. "It changes you, because you are seeing suffering that you don't see in the United States, massive suffering and cases you wouldn't see in the United States, like tetanus.

"A lot of folks in the Western world haven't seen what tetanus looks like when a real case explodes in front of them. It's daunting."

Wolfe said her brother panicked when she told him she was thinking of going, so she'd decided not to tell him or her sister about the trip until she gets back.

She's received financial donations from friends she knows who are out of work or on fixed incomes, and from complete strangers.

"It makes me so emotional that people are willing to give me this money," she said, tearing up. "People we don't even know."

She and her partner and her partner's daughter have also made a connection with the Bacas. The two families met and shared a meal together at Dion's restaurant last week.

"It's already been life-changing," Wolfe said.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.