These brave young Mexican women are heroines in Texas. Silvana Garza Valdez and María Paula Zárate, both 19 years old, rescued 20 girls trapped by the flooding of the Guadalupe River.
Why isn’t the mainstream media covering this?
I went to camp for 10 years on the Guadalupe River just a couple miles down from Camp Mystic. This tragedy hits close to home. Since there’s tons of information flying around, here is what I’m hearing from friends and family in the area and with kids at the camps.
Camp Mystic is an all girls Christian camp on the Guadalupe River and opened in 1926 and has been run by the same family since the 1930s. The current owners, Dick and Tweety Eastland, have been with the camp since 1974 and sadly I am hearing that Dick Eastland died in the flooding (unconfirmed) while trying to rescue the young campers in the Bubble Inn and Twins cabins. Those two cabins are along the river and are for the 7-8 year old campers (the youngest age group at the camp). The cabins reportedly washed away and almost, if not all, of the 27 missing kids from Camp Mystic are from those two cabins including two camp counselors (aged 19). At least two of those precious children are confirmed dead by their families and the bodies have been recovered.
There are about 40 summer camps in this area along the Guadalupe River. Thankfully, most of the camps were between terms so they did not have campers on site.
Camp Waldemar, which I attended, was in session but all the cabins are up on a hill and Waldemar has confirmed all campers and counselors are accounted for.
Heart O’ The Hills, a girls camp just down the river from Camp Mystic, was thankfully out of session. However, Jane Ragsdale, the longtime co-owner and director of Heart O' The Hills, died in the floods.
Camp La Junta is the all boys camp across from Mystic. That’s the camp where you’ve seen the footage of the cabin washing away with all the young boys in it. Miraculously, the camp says that all the campers are alive and accounted for.
Camp Stewart, another all boys camp just up the river, was thankfully between terms so no campers were on site. The new campers were set to arrive on July 6 (tomorrow).
Please continue to pray for these families. This is an unspeakable tragedy.
The organization also awarded a posthumous medal of honor to Amerie Jo Garza, who was inside Robb Elementary School and died in the shooting. https://t.co/phBbu3aUgu