Carolyn Newman was shocked and scared when her only child, LaQuail, wrote her from Iraq recently with the news that she had been stabbed by one of the prisoners she was guarding at Camp Bucca.

Ms. Newman was even more surprised when she learned her daughter was responding to the attack not by keeping her distance, but by getting even closer to those who were looking to harm her on a daily basis.

Army Staff Sgt. Newman had decided that these people needed help, and that she would be the one to deliver it. She launched a supply drive for the impoverished relatives left on the other side of the prison bars.

“The same prisoners she is guarding and that tried to kill her ... she is on a mission to make sure their children have shoes and clothes to wear,” said the proud mother, who lives in Chattanooga. “Now how wonderful is that?”

Staff Sgt. Newman, 26, is an Army reservist who was transferred to the 304th Military Police Battalion out of Nashville because her Chattanooga-based reserve unit, the 3397th Garrison Support Unit, was deactivated. She was deployed to southeastern Iraq in March to guard, feed and transfer Camp Bucca detainees, and she expects to remain there until March 2009.

It’s a difficult job, she wrote in an e-mail from her post, and she feels anger and fear each day because of it.

“My soldiers and myself are put in harm’s way every day, because when moving detainees to their designated areas they can hide things and plan things,” she wrote. “I am very cautious and very scared every time I am in front of one. ... Their ultimate goal is to injure or maybe even kill one of us.”

But when relatives of the detainees arrive at the camp to visit, their feet bruised and cut and their teeth rotting out of their mouths, Staff Sgt. Newman’s heart begins to melt.

“When you play with the kids and they have on too-small pants or no shirt or no shoes, it saddens you to know that the person who was bringing in their main source of income is now locked up,” she wrote. “The kids need shoes and shorts and socks and shirts and hats. The parents mostly want toothbrushes and toothpaste and soap.”

Staff Sgt. Newman started her makeshift supply drive by sharing her own care packages with both fellow soldiers and the impoverished children she would meet. But she now has enlisted the help of her mother and her church, Olivet Baptist in downtown Chattanooga, to expand the effort.

While a lot of the church’s parishioners already were reaching out to soldiers in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Newman’s effort is extra special, said the Rev. Kevin Adams, senior pastor at the church.

“With her being there, it’s not just a job, but a ministry,” Mr. Adams said. “You have to be cautious over there, but you have to deal with (the Iraqis) with love.”

The pastor said community members have used word of mouth to generate significant interest in the drive. The church has been collecting donations on Staff Sgt. Newman’s behalf and will ship those to her overseas, he said.

Staff Sgt. Newman says she is thrilled that others want to help out with something that started as a personal goal.

“We are here to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis, and what better way than to give them what they need and show them that, hey, we actually care, you know,” she wrote. “Give, because the more we do to accomplish our mission, the sooner we can get all of our troops out of here and back home with their families where they belong.”

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