Worried about the devastating impact of Hurricane Milton, a woman from Illinois drove a 54-hour round trip to rescue her 93-year-old grandma from her assisted living home in Florida.
Jennifer Seaman, 40, and her mom, Sue Schaffnit, 66, set off on their journey on Oct. 6 at 10 p.m., making the 1,210-mile journey through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia before arriving in Venice, Florida, at 7 p.m. local time on Oct. 7.
“Around 9 p.m., when things started to get more severe, I was talking to my mom,” Seaman, a stay-at-home mom, said. “We were back and forth on the phone, checking flights, but everything was booked.”
After making umpteen efforts, Seaman arrived at her mom’s house and spent the next five minutes discussing what they could do next, finally deciding to drive.
“We didn’t pack bags or have a change of clothes,” Seaman said.
Beginning their journey at 10 p.m., the pair spent the next 20 hours on the road before arriving at Venice, Florida.
The mother-daughter duo spent only 30 minutes at the care home packing the nonagenarian grandma’s clothes.
Although the staff at the care home had planned an alternative shelter-in-place and encouraged residents to stay, Seaman and her mom were worried that if something bad happened or if the storm took a massive turn and wiped people out, they didn’t want their grandma “to have died without family with her.”
Leaving Venice at 7:30 p.m. local time, the trio immediately hit gridlocked traffic—only moving 100 miles in the next six hours.
“As we were getting out, the storm was picking up intensity,” Seaman said. “The drive home was rough. ... Everyone was trying to leave.”
The plan was to drive as far as possible and stay in a hotel, but they found most hotels were fully booked.
“We were still calling hotels [the following morning] trying to find somewhere to rest for a couple of hours,” Seaman said. “We finally found a hotel just outside Atlanta where we checked in around 11 a.m. and headed out at 2 p.m.”
Finally, the family arrived back home in Peoria, Illinois, at 5 a.m. on Oct. 9 after spending 34 hours on the road.
Seaman is glad she went to pick up her grandma and is unsure how long she will stay with the family.
“Grandma is very relieved to be here, she was very strong throughout the journey, as it was a long way to travel at her age,” Seaman said. “We are so proud to have such a courageous woman as our matriarch ”
Seaman’s grandma has been anxious to get back and see how everyone else in her care home is doing.
