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San Francisco Writer Raises Over $160K For Mission District Apartment Fire Victims

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- A San Francisco writer has raised over $150,000 for victims of a massive apartment fire in the city's Mission District.

Zack Crockett watched the building full of apartments go up in flames, and decided to become a philanthropist of sorts by setting up a GoFundMe page for the victims.

"It took me ten minutes to set up this page.  It was the easiest thing I have ever done in my life," Crockett said.

Crockett's aiming to raise $200,000 to give the families at least $10,000 each, and is quickly approaching that goal.

To help fund the fire victims, click here.

"It went from $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, $50,000, $100,000.  It just keeps going up and up," Crockett told KPIX 5.

But, Crockett says GoFundMe will take five percent of all donations, and WePay, GoFundMe's payment system will take another one to three percent on top of that.

"I'd like to think that they'd be as generous as the community has been in a time of disaster,"

So, Zack reached out to GoFundMe, but the company turned him down.

"For something like this, this is really about community.  All the money should be going directly to them," Crockett said.

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