VISTA, Calif. – It all started as most great stories do, with a steaming cup of hot cocoa. 

Well, in this case, it started with a cup of hot cocoa, a few cookies, and a 5-year-old Katelynn Hardee and her mom Karina. 

Last December, Spectrum News 1 stopped by a fundraiser at Katelynn's school, Breeze Hill Elementary, where the duo was raising funds to pay off negative lunch balances. 

"She wanted to donate to her fellow Coyotes to make sure they had food in their bellies so they didn’t grumble," Karina said. "I told her when and where we can, we need to give back to our community as much as we are able to."

From there, Kiki's Kindness Project was born, with a mission to combat child hunger in the Vista neighborhood. 

Five months later, that's where we found Karina — at TJ Crossman's Auto Repair, in Vista. Every week, TJ opens his shop to volunteers from Vista Teen Outreach, a local organization that provides access to food pantries on campuses for middle and high schoolers. 

“We teamed up with them, donated money, donated time," Karina explained. "And we are helping their efforts of being able to feed 200 families in the Vista Community, along with amazing volunteers.”

Karina works alongside Debbie Medrano, the president of VTO. Medrano says the group is the only organization in Vista catering to middle and high school students specifically. 

“There are so many families where both [parents] aren’t working, so there’s so much limited money coming into the household," Medrano said. "If we weren’t here, these families wouldn’t be getting even this much food.” 

Every week, the group packs up hundreds of bags of food. It costs about $2000 per week to fulfill 200 bags, but their annual budget sits at $10,000 — meaning they need the help of community members like Karina to pull through. 

In fact, Kiki's Kindness Project was able to supplement the first week of food and is now helping VTO to keep up with their efforts. 

“They have been out on the front lines with us, they have been driving food to one of the schools every week and then financially donating," Medrano said. "It continues to pour in and we couldn’t do what we did if we didn’t have that.”

For Karina, it's been important to show Katelynn that her kindness hasn't stopped after just one fundraiser. 

“Really her one simple act of kindness has created these ripples and waves into the community and being able to pass kindness to people who might need it at that moment,” she said.

If you'd like to help donate to VTO's cause, you can visit their GoFundMe Page.