Monica Puig vowed to help Puerto Rico come back stronger after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September.
Puig has returned to the island to deliver relief and raise awareness for the crisis she calls "a matter of life and death" in a new interview with Vogue Magazine.
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"I just hope that people realize that this isn’t just some small thing. This is a matter of life and death," Puig told Vogue. "There are people who are struggling with their health: I visited a children's hospital with Maria (Sharapova), and we saw that there have been rising cases of illnesses due to contamination in the water and the bacteria there. This isn’t something to joke around with.
"Just because you say that my family or other people’s families are okay, that doesn’t mean that the situation is stable. It’s going to take a lot of days, months, maybe even years to get things back to where they were. So I just hope that people open themselves up to the possibility that there are even more people out there that we haven’t even reached yet who need our help, and they need it urgently."
#YoNoMeQuito 🇵🇷❤️
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Puig created a YouCaring page that has raised more than $157,000 for Puerto Rican relief so far.
The Olympic gold medal champion and Maria Sharapova delivered supplies to Puerto Rico two weeks ago. Sharapova has also pledged sales of her Sugarpova candy line to benefit the relief effort.
Puig, who has returned to San Juan, describes the city as resembling "a war zone" in her Vogue interview.
"It’s very chaotic here," Puig told Vogue. "You definitely see the devastation everywhere you go. It looks like a war zone, because all you see are military planes flying around, and helicopters. A lot of military officers on the street.
"It’s not the Puerto Rico that I remember. The Puerto Rico that I knew a couple of months ago is not the same Puerto Rico of present day."
The 24-year-old San Juan native broke down in tears dedicating her run to the Luxembourg final to Puerto Rico last month.
While some officials say about 40 percent of electricity generation has resumed in Puerto Rico, a new CNN report states there are still massive outages throughout the island. Furthermore, officials don’t know exactly how much of the restored electricity is reaching homes, hospitals and schools, CNN reports.
November is typically a month players use for rest and recovery. Puig has invested her time and energy into aiding Puerto Rico.
Fulfilling her vow to help her home island, Puig also appears in a new AT&T ad campaign dedicated to Puerto Rico's recovery effort.