When it happened, I could hardly believe it, though we’d been preparing for days. Filling our cars with gas, stocking up on food and water, buying extra propane tanks. My dad is a civil engineer and his first job was helping build the Oroville Dam. “When it goes over that emergency spillway, the s#@* is going to hit the fan,” said Dad. “They should have concreted that wall long ago. They never did. It’s still dirt. When the water hits that dirt it’s going to begin eroding the hillside. It’s going to compromise the dam. We’re all in trouble now.”

I left my dad’s engineering office and went and bought another round of groceries, though I wasn’t sure this would help anyone. My dad didn’t know if we were high enough to escape the water where we lived at the base of the Sutter Buttes. If the dam broke it would be a mega disaster. The Sutter Buttes, an ancient volcano in the center of the Sacramento valley, would become an island like Hawaii, but without the beaches and hotels. Our plan was to hike up into the buttes if the flood waters overtook our home.

But I didn’t believe the dam could actually break. None of us believed it. So on Sunday evening with water running over the emergency spillway all weekend long, nobody was really prepared when officials called for a mass evacuation of our valley. Two hundred thousand people told to get to high ground as fast as possible because the dam could fail within the hour, sending a thirty foot wall of water down river.

An hour earlier, our 14 year old son John had broken his arm playing football in our yard with his cousins. Scott and John were in Yuba City at Urgent Care, not much more than a stone’s throw away from the Feather River when the emergency alert system hit our phones. The same Feather River that flows out of the Oroville Dam where the wall of water would come from.

In the midst of a family birthday dinner for my dad, (we’d cancelled his big 75th bash because of the flood warnings), everyone’s phones started pinging the alert.

In a state of fear and unbelief, our family members fled our home. I jumped on my phone trying to reach Scott. They were treating John’s fractured wrist at Urgent Care, even as they closed the clinic, kicking out all the other patients with lesser needs. A homeless man in the Urgent Care parking lot began screaming, “God is testing us! He’s testing us with this flood!” as people ran for their lives.

“I might have thought the homeless man was an angel with a message from God,” said Scott over the phone with me in the midst of the chaos, “Until he tried to steal the clinic’s wheelchair while howling, “God’s testing us!” across the parking lot. One of the clinic workers ran him down and retrieved the wheelchair so he wasn’t an angel,” Scott assured me.

“Please get home as fast as you can,” I begged before I hung up with Scott as friends began calling our home, seeking refuge. “We don’t know if we are high enough,” I told people. “You are welcome to come, but we might have to hike into the buttes if water gets here.”

It took hours for Scott and John to make it home in gridlock traffic. Several families said they were on their way to our house, but by 11 pm that night nobody had arrived.

A handful of cities along the Feather River were facing evacuation. People thought they were about to die. The roads were a snarled mess to say the least.

I could hardly sleep that night. The miracle of it all was the dam was holding. I checked my phone again and again, waiting for the worst to come. Praying like crazy it wouldn’t come. Pleading with God for mercy for our valley. For his angels to hold the dam together.

Early the next morning our house was eerily quiet. The families headed to our home the night before had stayed put in Yuba City because the roads were jammed. Other families we’d offered refuge to had headed to the coast range, the foothills, and south to Sacramento.

“I’m going to drive to up to Sutter and see what’s going on there,” Scott said as the sun rose over the buttes that morning. A half hour later Scott returned. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said, “Pass Road is filled with refugees. People slept in their cars last night. There are babies in sleeper pajamas toddling alongside Pass Road.”

I quickly gathered food and told Scott to load a case of water into the back of the truck. “Let’s go see how we can help them,” I said with a terrible feeling in my stomach. I felt so bad that our children had slept in warm beds while babies in sleeper pajamas slept in cars just up the road from us.

A half hour later, we returned home with a line of vehicles in our wake. Lots of families along Pass Road were in RVs and campers, but others were sleeping in tiny Toyotas. People without children we left to fend for themselves along the road. We handed out some food, but when we came to several families with those small children in sleeper pajamas toddling around with cars whizzing past, I couldn’t stand anymore. “Come home with us,” I pleaded with these shell-shocked families. “We will take care of you. We will keep you safe.”

Several families came. Only two of the children, a five and six year old, and one mother spoke English. I’ve always regretted that the Spanish I learned in high school and college didn’t stick. But at least I remembered, “Mi casa is su casa,” and I meant this when I said it to them. Our home was their home during this evacuation.

Was I scared to bring these strangers into our home?

Sure I was, but what was a little more fear in the face of a roaring flood? In the face of 200,000 people fleeing for their lives as night descended on our valley.

The four small children didn’t scare me a bit. The two weary young mothers didn’t frighten me, either. It helped that one mother spoke perfect English. It was the four men we brought home with these families that frightened me. One man was alone in his car, and after looking him over, I didn’t want to let him into our home.

“He’s not with us,” Tillie, the mother who spoke English told me when I asked her about the man who had followed them down our driveway. “He just camped beside us last night and won’t leave.” Tillie seemed afraid of him.

“Tell him to go back to town. Tell him things with the dam are under control for now. He won’t drown today. Tell him he has to leave.”

Tillie translated this for the man and he slowly drove out of our driveway. Four cars stayed put. We welcomed these flood refugees into our home and fed them. The children happily played with our boys’ toys. Everyone used the bathrooms and rested in our living room. And to my humiliation, the men I’d been afraid to let into our home, after quietly eating our leftover spaghetti, washed my dishes and swept my kitchen floor.

I left the kitchen so they didn’t see the tears that filled my eyes as they did my chores for me. These families were just like our family. Tillie told me how her husband brought along their children’s life vests and planned on putting their little ones in their life vests before placing them in the tallest trees they could find when the water came. The older children hugged me and thanked me for bringing out more toys for them to play with. I found baby wipes in our bathroom cabinet so the mothers could change their toddlers’ diapers.

By the time these families left our house later that day, I had fallen in love with them.

“If a levee on the river breaks, come back to us, we will take care of you,” we told them as they packed up their children to go. “If the dam breaks, go south or west. Get out of this valley as fast as you can. It will be a catastrophe here if the dam fails.”

“If the dam fails, I’m going back to Mexico,” said one of the men. I didn’t need Tillie to translate that for me. Though he spoke in Spanish, I understood him completely.

One of the men asked to leave his car with us so he could drive his family in their other car. Three days later, this man returned to pick up his vehicle. He brought a friend along, a young man who’d come to America at 10 years of age. This boy from Mexico had recently graduated Chico State, and reminded me of my own college-age son now living in Chico.

“Will you ask him what it was like to spend the night in his car with his children?” I pointed to the man who had swept my kitchen floor, this man who had taught me a major lesson in humility.

The man spoke in Spanish and smiled into my eyes. I smiled and nodded as if I understood him, then turned to the Chico State boy to receive the translation. “He said his little boy kept saying, ‘Daddy I’m so cold.’ that night.”

I stopped smiling and tears filled my eyes. If we had only known these families were stranded in their cars out there in the darkness, Scott and I would have went and brought them home with us. We’d have put them in warm beds. Helped them care for their little children. All I could think was, we should have helped these people sooner.

I stepped over and put my arms around the man who had used his strong farm worker’s body to keep his little boy warm in the car. “If you need anything, anything at all, we are here for you.” I know this man understood some of my English, he just didn’t speak it very well. Still, I looked at the Chico State boy to translate my message.

The man hugged me some more, and I didn’t want to let go of him. Scott hugged this man after I did, and I could tell my husband felt it too, a bond with this man we couldn’t ignore or escape. In the midst of this crisis, these people were no longer refugees, they were our people. Our families.

Before all this happened, I’d been struggling with America closing its borders to some middle eastern countries. And I’m really struggling with the wall Trump wants to build between us and Mexico.

Take it for what it’s worth, (and please keep in mind several of my great-grandparents were hard-working immigrants who came to America for a better life), but I don’t want to send the illegals in California back across the border if they are working here. Let them stay. Let them work. Give them work permits. Let’s give their children a chance at the American dream just like we all had. Unless you’re a native American Indian, you were once a refugee here too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for sending the drug dealers, criminals, and those who refuse to work home to wherever they came from, but can we keep the good, hard-working people who are just trying to make a better life for their children here in California?

Plenty of Americans in California don’t want to work. Let’s send these lazy folks to Mexico or on a long vacation somewhere else because I can guarantee you these Californians wouldn’t survive a day in our orchard picking peaches with us. The Bible says if you don’t work, you don’t eat. I’m all for that. The Bible also says take care of the refugees among you.

But being honest, I have to say a part of me is for the ban with middle eastern countries right now where the terrorists come from, at least until we figure out how to vet them. I want to make America safe again, which I know isn’t possible, but a little safer without ISIS invading our borders would be nice.

Another part of me thinks, why can’t we take in some of these refugee families? Why can’t we at least let the women and children come to America?

Then I remember those men who washed my dishes and swept my kitchen floor. Daddies doing their best to take care of their families. How do we separate daddies from their refugee families? How do we work this all out?

This is all bigger than me. I don’t have an answer for this crisis in our nation. I’m just sharing my refugee story with you. One thing I know without a doubt, we need each other. People should help each other no matter what country we come from. This thing in the middle east is like a dam breaking. As my dad said, we are all in trouble now. But I know how to help the refugees right in front of me. At least I can do that.