How the internet rallied to rescue a family in Katy

Sometime after midnight, as the Sunday of the relentless Hurricane Harvey bled into Monday, Kami Gilmour texted Stephanie Caro: "Girl, what's your plan?"

Caro, 59, didn't have a good one. By the light of her cell phone, she'd been watching the water rise inside her home in Katy. Caro's husband Steve, 67, has a degenerative spinal condition, and if the water kept rising, he couldn't climb up to the roof.

Caro had called 911 to be rescued by boat, as many of her Katy neighbors with young children had been. But when Caro called, an operator told her that she was on a list for a boat rescue, but would have to wait.

She didn't yet know that soon, hundreds of strangers take part in a nationwide quest to get her and her household to safety.

Caro told Gilmour, the friend who'd texted, that she'd been vomiting, probably from nervous energy. She was just trying to stay up on furniture in a foot and a half of water—up to the electrical sockets.

Gimour, who was in Fort Collins, Colo., knew Caro from the youth ministry universe where she was known as Mama Caro, someone she'd seen improvise a plan for other people's emergencies. Caro was shutting down, Gilmour thought.

Around 1 a.m., Gilmour, shared a video Caro had posted on Facebook on an empty nesters' support page: a whisper-narrated tour of her ravaged home. Gilmour gave out Caro's name and address and asked people to start making calls and recruiting help.

Gilmour got 269 shares on that post. And by tagging Caro, she tapped into thousands of Caro's connections.

One of those was Bethany Wylde, of Boston, who met Caro during her youth ministry in Dunedin, Fla. Wylde, 27, was coming off a night shift as an emergency medical technician. When she saw the post, she created an alert on a Facebook app—looping in one group of miniature donkey enthusiasts she knew, and also a group of backyard goat farmers she knew.

Wylde also contacted her sister Erin Williams, who has a huge social network, and urged her to spread the message.

Williams alerted a friend in Katy, who hustled to organize a boat expedition.

Williams also shared the alert on an infertility group. And she tagged her Facebook friend Jennifer Spadafora, who had connections in Katy.

At 8:30 a.m., Spadafora, 38, was riding the T to her investment banking job in Boston. As she scrolled through her Facebook feed, Williams' message caught her eye.

"It grabbed me because I saw the words 'Katy, Texas.'" Spadafora had a friend in Katy: Mandy Kleinman, whom she'd met years ago at a resort in Jamaica. They'd bonded because both their sons have autism spectrum disorder. Maybe, Spadafora thought, Kleinman would know someone who could help. She posted a screenshot of the post on Kleinman's page.

Kleinman, 44, spotted the post soon after she woke up. Kleinman works as a secretary for the principal at Katy's Nottingham Country Elementary. Because of Harvey, the school was on hiatus for the week.

Kleinman was following official orders to stay put in her house. But she looked up the address on Wylde's post. It was in Old Katy.

Kleinman tagged her friend Shannon Harris. Their sons, both now 21, had played football together when they were kids. Harris lived on that side of town, and might know someone who could help.
Harris, a 50-year-old corporate trainer for a mortgage company, was working at home. The water on her street was about chest-high, but it hadn't breached her house.

Harris put the message up on Katy Train, a high school football discussion board, and asked if anybody knew where the street was and if anyone had a boat.

Within minutes she had a response.

Cara Kneisly, a woman Harris did not know, posted that someone named Steve Naegeli was on the way. And 20 minutes later, when another person posted on the Katy Train board that an elderly family friend was stranded on the second floor of a house, it was said that Naegeli was en route to rescue that person as well.

"My understanding is that Steve guy got both families out," said Harris.

Back in Boston, Wylde, the EMT, heard through her sister's connections that someone had headed over to the Caro's house on a kayak and witnessed a rescue taking place.

But it wasn't "that Steve guy" or the Coast Guard or the Katy police who rescued them.

It was the Cajun Navy – the highly unofficial group of Louisiana boat owners who'd headed to Houston to help. A couple of guys named Chris and Aaron loaded Caro, Steve, Caro's sister Kim and their cats and dog into a boat. In the chaos of wading out barefoot in the coursing rain, Caro forgot to ask their last names or get their phone number.

Were they related to "that Steve guy"? Or were they at the end of some other Internet chains that had shared Caro's information?

The world may never know. "They picked us up around 9:30 a.m.," Caro said. "They came to our house. They knew to come to our house. We were on a list they had."

Gabrielle Banks covers federal court for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter or send her tips at gabrielle.banks@chron.com.

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