The balloons from Cristel Miller’s recent 50th birthday bumped against her legs in the floodwaters that were quickly filling the new home she shared with her 20-year-old son, Brandon, near the Catawba River just east of Morganton. 

“Up until that afternoon, it was all just business as usual,” Miller says, recalling the moments before she and her son were forced to flee their home, one that for years Miller had been saving whatever she could of her single-parent teacher’s salary to buy. It was the first-ever place she’d owned. “In Southern California, it happens all the time, you know, mudslides or rock slides. That’s just normal stuff.  So when they were saying a storm is coming and there’s going to be mudslides or whatnot, or some power outages, we just kind of thought okay, well, let’s make sure we have food if we’re not going to be able to go anywhere.”

Just a few hours earlier, the rain from Hurricane Helene that had been pouring down on Western North Carolina in historic amounts had finally stopped. Miller took the opportunity to walk her neighborhood and have coffee with a neighbor who still had power while surveying with curious interest the waters that were beginning to creep into the occasional backyard.

Now, like other rivers and streams in the region, the Catawba River had turned uncharacteristically vicious, forced out of its banks by a thousand-year event. The flooring beneath Miller’s feet buckled and bubbled as she and Brandon waded from room to room, sloshing about frantically in search of anything that could quickly be shoved into the attic. There wasn’t much they could get up there. The balloons continued to float, spinning in eddies as water turned corners from room to room.

Not far away, entire homes – entire villages, even – were being swept away.

Lives were being lost. 

A new start, then disbelief

The birthday had marked more than one important milestone for Miller; a year prior she’d moved east with her son Brandon, now 20, from sunny but crowded Southern California to start a new life – him in college in Charlotte, her teaching chemistry at NCSSM-Morganton. They’d celebrated it all right here in this very house just west of Morganton.

They loved this house, Miller and her son – loved this town, this quiet little neighborhood nestled in the foothills. They got kayaks and paddled the Catawba. Brandon tried fishing for the first time in his life. On their walks along the river they often spotted otters and beavers and, once, even a bald eagle. Miller dug along the creek and river banks for quartz and gemstones to bring to her classroom.

“It was amazing,” Miller says of their new life. “I had to keep reminding myself that I live here, that I am not on vacation, I’m not visiting. I actually live here. I don’t know that I could have asked for better.”

But that day, the water continued to rise. Now it reeked of raw sewage backing up through the pipes from the flooded city sewer.

With everything they could manage stuffed in the attic, Miller and her son bundled their dog and cat and a handful of clothes into Brandon’s SUV and made for the interstate a few miles away, following familiar streets only to discover them blocked by downed trees. They drove beneath a large wind-tipped tree that hung precariously above the asphalt, suspended by power lines that sagged deeply.

After several dead ends, Miller and her son finally made I-40 and rolled east, whiplashed almost beyond belief by the sudden turn of events as they made for Jacksonville where Miller’s parents and sister live. Sometimes they laughed at the solutions Brandon’s friends back in California were suggesting in text messages (bail the floodwater out with a bucket), and sometimes Miller cried for all that was being lost. For long stretches, she and her son just drove along in silence.

Miller opened the front door to her parents’ house in Jacksonville at 1 a.m., still wearing soaked, smelly clothes.  After days with no information about what had happened to Miller’s house, her sister posted social media pleas for someone, anyone, please, if you can, take a photo of this particular house on Eagle Lane in Morganton.

Help arrives in a horse trailer

As strange as it sounds, Levi Dozier, an NCSSM-Morganton junior, headed toward the coast to escape a hurricane. He and his family live in a small town called Windsor, not far from the westernmost reaches of the Albemarle Sound, the part of North Carolina usually battered by hurricanes. This time, it was a refuge from an ocean-borne storm.

The day after Helene, Levi opened his NCSSM email to find a message from Miller, who taught his Chemistry 101 class. 

“As far as assignments go right now those are postponed,” the message said in part. “Please DO NOT worry about that since we all have enough to worry about right now. Way more important things going on than chem labs.”

For context, Miller shared the basics of her own challenge before adding, “Please take care of yourselves and your families right now. We will get through this . . . .”

Levi’s mother, Christy, felt compelled to reach out with an offer to help however they could. Not knowing the state of her home, Miller had no idea what to tell them, or the others in the NCSSM community who had reached out to help. 

Then, at last, a stranger responded to her sister’s social media request with a handful of photos; the house was still standing, but the high water mark on the siding was six feet above the ground.

Miller cried when she saw it, then set out the next day to confront the damage in person.

Mud covered the floors. Tree limbs and an odd assortment of items from other people’s homes – a trash can, a table – sat in her yard. Inside she found a handmade book from Brandon, a Mother’s Day present he made for her in fifth grade. She pulled it from the mud, hoping to salvage it, but it fell apart in her hands. Furniture and appliances had floated to random parts of the house. Mold was already creeping across surfaces.

“It was overwhelming,” Miller says. “It looked like Mother Nature had looted our house.”

But Miller has a scientific mind. She’s a problem solver. She gave herself a moment to let the emotions have their say, then began formulating a plan for recovery that started with clearing out the debris.

“I’ve got to tear out everything,” she told the Doziers, who were still offering to help.

A couple of days later, a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer filled with tools rolled to a stop in Miller’s driveway at 8 a.m. Out hopped her student Levi, his mom, Christy, his dad, Chris, and his brothers, Myles and Jasper. The family had left Eastern North Carolina at 3 a.m. and driven two-thirds of the way across the state to help.  It was, Miller said, “a portable construction crew, right down to 12-year-olds ready to work.” 

The family spent two days with Miller, staying overnight in the living quarters of the horse trailer.

The group ripped out everything from the ceiling down, leaving only the wall studs and floor joists. Along the way, other folks randomly wandering by — complete strangers, in fact — joined the crew. Out of the blue, a church group appeared to help. When word came that someone down the street needed a hand for a moment, those who could broke away to go help. 

By the end of the second day, the debris was in tall piles next to the street. Despite the grimness of the task, the work proceeded with laughter and smiles.

“When you stand back and look at it, it was amazing,” Miller says. “It was really cool, just all these different people from different walks of life, just grouping up and tearing up your house in this one big, happy, kind of funny little party. This was what humanity is about.”

The Dozier family wasn’t through. Chris, Levi’s dad, returned with an electrician friend who resolved some electrical and HVAC issues, and then later with someone who had donated insulation for the house.

For the Doziers, lending a hand was obvious. “As Christians, we just didn’t feel in our heart that we could stay home and not go help,” said Christy. “The community that we live in has been flooded as well, so it was something that hit close to the heart for us. We want to show love to other people, just as other people have shown love to us. Why would we not help?”

Stepping in to help one of his teachers was a new but rewarding experience for Levi. “I got to know her personality a little better, and what she likes to do, and her hobbies. She’s just a nice person overall, and she’s going through the trouble of teaching me, so I wanted to help her in some way if I could.”

A new perspective

Hurricane Helene has left Miller a changed person. Not so much by the flood, she says, but by the generosity of strangers, friends, and colleagues. At times it has felt awkward, she admits, as a strong and independent person who has pretty much made her own way through life, to grow comfortable letting someone else help. 

“These are incredibly generous, amazing human beings,” she says. “I didn’t know this many of them existed. There’s this phrase that you say, and it’s ‘Thank you.’ It’s supposed to carry this weight with it, but it doesn’t. Saying thank you for what all these people did for me and my son feels insignificant. I can say thank you and I can give them a hug and tell them how much it means, but it’s just words. They do not convey what I’m really feeling inside. I didn’t know what to say to people then – and I still don’t know what to say now.”