"Weeks after being swept away in floodwaters, a North Carolina grandmother is among an untold number of victims who remain unaccounted for after Hurricane Helene."
"In the beginning, Jessica Meidinger tried to keep her hopes up.
She tried to believe that her mother, Kim Ashby, was just stranded somewhere in the storm-ravaged mountains of western North Carolina. She tried to put her faith in the rescue crews who spent each day scouring the riverbanks near Ashby’s now-demolished home. She tried to imagine her phone ringing with good news, tried to picture the moment when she and her mom were finally reunited.
But by Monday, 10 days after her mother was seen being swept away by Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters, Meidinger’s dwindling hope had given way to a brutal realization. That was the day she provided investigators with her mother’s toothbrush and a swab of her own cheek so they would have samples of Ashby’s DNA.
“The implication of that is hard to think through,” Meidinger said. It meant searchers thought they would need to identify a body. It meant there was almost no chance that Ashby was still alive."
Sarah Kaplan and Dino Grandoni report for the Washington Post October 12, 2024.
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