Samantha

“I don’t know how we survived… but we did.”

Samantha Oxford remembers May 22, 2011, as a day that started off like any other—but something felt off. She couldn’t explain it at the time, but a strange feeling lingered in her chest. She had just dropped off her grandkids with her daughter and headed home, planning a normal evening. “I was going to make dinner,” she recalls. “I started peeling potatoes.”

But the power kept flickering, and the satellite TV finally cut out. That’s when her boyfriend suggested they head to Applebee’s to ride out the storm. It felt safer to leave. But before they could even pull out of the driveway, the radio came alive with urgency—“Take cover. Take cover. Take cover.”

They ran back into the house. Samantha lit a candle. Moments later, the tornado hit.

What followed was a blur of chaos, wind, and fear. “It sounded like a million little men tearing my house apart,” Samantha said, still able to recall every terrifying second. She and her boyfriend huddled next to their bed as the roof began to lift. He threw a mattress over them, but it was ripped away like paper. She was crouched, exposed, and the nightstand slammed into her again and again.

“I remember screaming through the whole thing. I was scared. Everything hurt. My boyfriend held on to a sewer pipe coming up from the floor and wrapped his legs around it—wrapped them around me. That’s how we made it.”

When the storm passed, they were surrounded by silence, debris—and a city forever changed. Samantha sat on the remains of her home’s foundation when her phone rang. It was her son, Spencer. “Are you okay, Mom?” he asked. She told him she was… just before her phone died. The last thing he heard was the sound of her voice breaking under the weight of it all.

Spencer left work immediately, desperate to find her, walking through debris and devastation, even witnessing unthinkable things along the way. “I told him later… if anything like this ever happens again, and you’re safe—stay safe.”

In the hours that followed, Samantha and her boyfriend wandered through what used to be their neighborhood—stepping over power lines, fallen trees, twisted metal. Strangers picked them up and brought them to temporary shelters. Hospitals overflowed. Her back ached. Her clothes were torn and soaked. And still, she kept going.

“I didn’t know it then, but I had no broken bones. Just every muscle in my body clenched so tight from the fear and pain. I couldn’t even walk at first.”

Samantha’s memories of the next few days are a mix of shock, kindness, and the surreal. A hospital aide helped her shower for the first time. Friends showed up with clothes. Her ex-in-laws opened their doors. A borrowed truck became their only vehicle. Everything they owned was gone.

But then—small miracles.

Her friend Amanda found a bracelet Samantha thought was lost forever, teetering on the edge of broken furniture. Later, in the debris, a perfume box was discovered. Inside was a letter—her father’s letter, written to her before he passed away. Somehow, against all odds, it survived the storm.

“That was my sign. My dad was still watching out for me.”

Samantha doesn’t call it survivor’s guilt, but the question still lingers in her heart: Why me? Why did she live when others didn’t? She lost neighbors that day—an elderly woman battling cancer, a young mom’s grandmother pulled from the stairs by the tornado. The weight of that reality never fully leaves.

Still, Samantha remains deeply grateful—for the hands that pulled her through, for her children and grandchildren who were spared, and for the life she still gets to live.

“Material things can be replaced. But your family, the people you love—that’s what really matters. That’s what I carry with me every day.”