Tabatha "Tabby" Asbury and her family received an outpouring of support from the community after they lost their Riverside home to a fire on Jan. 8, 2014.
One year later, Asbury was able to give back to the firefighters and members of the community who helped her and her family, fixing a special community chili dinner on Feb. 4 at the Riverside Community Center.
She put on the dinner with support through Capital One's #WishForOthers, a contest sponsored by the McLean, Va.,-based banking firm that gives people the ability to make their wish for another person come true.
Asbury's wish was to "do something nice" for the people who helped her family when they lost everything, and she told a firefighter she wanted to cook chili for the crews who extinguished the blaze in her home on Marigold Court.
"I was overjoyed, because I really wanted to do this and had no idea how I was going to do this, and now it was within availability," she said Wednesday.
Asbury, 27, said she learned about the #WishForOthers contest campaign after it was featured on celebrity chef Rachael Ray's daytime television show. She posted her story and pictures of her burned-out home on Capital One's Facebook page, and she explained "all the good that our community did, the hard work of the firefighters."
Asbury, her 35-year-old husband Steven, their 5-year-old twin daughters and Asbury's mother, who lives with the family, lost nearly all their possessions in the fire that gutted their home.
Not long after the fire, the family was told to come to the Riverside Community Center, where they were surprised with bags of donated clothes, toys and gift cards.
Asbury suspects many of the donations, such as new toys still in their boxes, could have been the donors' Christmas gifts.
"They had absolutely nothing, and there was just this outpouring of love," she said of her daughters.
Asbury said she was "over the moon" when she learned she won the #WishForOthers contest.
For the thank-you dinner, Capital One employees helped set up, prepare, cook and serve the white-bean-and-chicken chili, and the cost was covered by Capital One, according to a company spokesperson.
Capital One employees also helped Asbury deliver leftover chili to several of the fire companies that responded.
Andy Doyle, spokesperson for the Joppa-Magnolia Volunteer Fire Company, said members are "extremely grateful for her thoughts on this and her consideration."
"We're sorry it was under these circumstances, and we thank [Asbury] for the thoughtfulness and caring when she submitted her application for the volunteer firefighters and community members that were there to assist her family," he said.
About 45 firefighters overall, from the Abingdon, Aberdeen, Bel Air, Joppa-Magnolia, Level and Susquehanna Hose fire companies, responded overall. First responders were alerted around 9:30 a.m., and they came to a house being consumed by flames.
They battled the blaze with outside temperatures in the teens and 20s, forcing many of the firefighters to take breaks around mobile heaters or in a Harford County HAZMAT vehicle.
The fire started in the garage and was caused by an overloaded power strip, according to the Office of the State Fire Marshal.
Asbury, who is a stay-at-home mom, said she was watching "Sesame Street" with her children. Her husband, who works at night in the McCormick & Company Inc. distribution center in Belcamp, was asleep. Her mother was also home.
A close friend came to visit, and she told Asbury that she smelled smoke and was hearing noises in the adjacent garage.
"She was the one who opened the garage door and said, 'Tabby your garage is on fire,' " Asbury recalled.
They tried to put out the fire with fire extinguishers and a garden hose, but they could not control it. They got the children, her mother and dog out of the house and called 911.
"We tried everything we could," she said of efforts to control the fire themselves. "It was just beyond what we could do."
The Asbury family spent the next year living in an apartment a few blocks from their house. They moved into their rebuilt home in late January.
She thanked the many people who have helped, including a local volunteer firefighter who has befriended the family.
Teddy Biebl, 32, of Riverside, who is not an active firefighter, met Asbury at the community center during the clothing and toy drive.
Biebl said he also raised about $300 through a raffle of two baskets of chips and homemade salsa, and he has remained in touch with the family. He recently helped them move back into their house.
"It's been awesome," he said of seeing the family return home. "They're all happy now because they're not all cramped into a condo."