A Florida woman who put a ‘hot and sexy female’ sign in her front yard to try to get her power switched back on after Hurricane Irma has seen her inventive recovery tactics go viral.
Kynse Leigh, 37, was in a Tampa hospital recovering from a kidney and pancreas organ transplant when the hurricane hit her neighborhood in Fort Myers.
When she returned to find it was broken, the mother-of-one put a sign in her front yard pleading for help so that she could move back in and continue to heal from the procedure.
On Sunday, she left a sign in her front yard which read: ‘Hot sexy female seeks lineman to electrify her life.’
The message was spray painted on to a large piece of leftover plywood in hot pink. Leigh placed it in front of the fallen trees which the hurricane brought down.
Kynse Leigh, 37, left a large sign in her front yard in Fort Myers, Florida, on Sunday to attract linemen to restore her power which was wiped out by Hurricane Irma
The PPL linemen left their own message on the plywood for Leigh to later find
To spread awareness of her efforts, Leigh, a real estate broker, uploaded a photograph of herself posing next to the sign and shared it on social media.
‘Maybe this will work,’ she wrote hopefully alongside it.
Within a day, the post was shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook and caught the eye of local linemen who stopped by on Monday to restore the woman’s power.
They posed for a photograph next to the sign and left their own message on the sign, writing: ‘Power on due to your PPL lineman.’
Speaking to DailyMail.com on Tuesday, Leigh said she posted the sign after hearing that it could take up to two weeks for her electricity to be restored.
In ordinary circumstances, she said she would have waited her turn but because she is still recovering from the operation, she desperately needed power to be able to keep her house clean and cool enough.
‘After Hurricane Charlie, I spent two weeks without power but coming out of an organ transplant it’s a little more difficult.’
‘The heat makes me sick and just being in a clean environment is so important. You can’t keep your home clean and keep germs out without power,’ she said.
On Monday, a day after she posted her sign, two PPL linemen visited the woman’s home to restore her power
Leigh (left before the hurricane) was in hospital in Tampa (right) as the hurricane ravaged her hometown between September 8 and 10. She suffers Type 1 diabetes and was recovering from a kidney and pancreas transplant
Kynse (above with her eight-year-old son before the operation) was diagnosed with stage five kidney failure in October
Leigh was diagnosed with stage five kidney failure in October as a result of high blood pressure that is caused by her Type 1 diabetes.
She had been on the organ donor list for 100 days when she underwent the kidney and pancreas transplant from a 15-year-old boy on August 31 at Tampa General Hospital.
She was released before Irma hit but had to be readmitted after taking a bad reaction to the procedure.
As the storm ravaged her hometown and the rest of southwest Florida between September 8 and 10, she stayed at Tampa General Hospital to be treated and had to rely on updates from her neighbors about her home.
After her operation, Leigh spent a few nights at a hotel in Tampa before being readmitted. When she was finally released again last week, she had to go to a friend’s house
The woman said she would have ordinarily waited for the power to come back on in two weeks but that her recovery meant she needed power to keep her home cool and clean
‘My house was there, it was in tact. There’s an oak tree at the bottom of my pool and I have some minor damages. It is what it is,’ she said.
Unable to stay in her own home and reluctant to be anywhere that could put her at risk of an infection, Leigh stayed at a friend’s empty house for a few days.
On Sunday, she made the sign lightheartedly but hoped that it would work.
‘I put the sign up not yesterday but the day before and yesterday I had power. All of the crews and linemen are doing a fantastic job.
‘Now, I’m back home and I got to sleep in my own bed last night for the first time since August 30th which was absolutely amazing.
‘All of the crews and linemen are doing a fantastic job here,’ she added.
The electricity crew in Leigh’s street on Monday. She said crews were still working on the entire neighborhood but her power is restored
Leigh was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a 10-year-old and would have had to have gone on dialysis if it weren’t for the organ transplant.
Leigh is now back in her home and is helping neighbors with the clean-up mission
She pleaded with more people to consider registering as donors and told how the 15-year-old boy whose organs she now has also saved another five people.
‘It’s absolutely amazing.
‘The more people that can be organ donors, the more lives can be saved.
‘There are 140,000 people on the organ transplant waiting list in America. It’s very, very important to spread the message,’ she said.
On Monday, a week after Irma, there were still 800,000 people without power in Florida as a result of the storm.
Most of the remaining outages were in Florida Power & Light’s service area in the southern parts of the state. FPL, the state’s biggest electric company, said 204,000 customers had no power, down from more than 3.6 million on Sept. 11.
At the height of the devastation, there were 7.6million without power.