SAN DIEGO — San Diegans gathered at the House of Ukraine Wednesday following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speech before the U.S. Congress.

At the house in Balboa Park, FOX 5 spoke to a woman from Poland who said there are millions of Ukrainians in her home country, adding that the shelters in her village 75 miles from the border with Ukraine are full of refugees.

“All the people who live through the second war feel terrible,” she said. “They feel like it started again because nobody wants to live with this situation.” 

Bob Mulrooney, a veteran, was first in line. He and other members of the Old Mission Bay Athletic Club, which puts on the Over The Line tournament in Mission Beach every year, passed around the hat to collect money to donate to Ukraine. 

“Here’s $1,000. This is from my meeting I went to Monday night,” Mulrooney told FOX 5 Wednesday. “I passed the hat to my friend and said, ‘what can we do?’ and this is what all the guys threw in.”

He praised Zelenskyy’s speech and like everyone else there Wednesday, he felt compelled to do something.

“When you commit genocide on women and children, it’s just overwhelming and it should reach everybody right in the heart,” Mulrooney told FOX 5. “If everybody did something, we could help them out.”

He hopes the speech motivates NATO to do more.