American Dream Sours for Family Stricken by Savage Storm

Cheryl Mestas was standing at the sliding glass door inside her home, with her grandson, when she saw something odd and heard something terrifying.

The rain drops were falling “parallel to the ground,” she said, “and we heard popping and a roaring” sound.

“Then my daughter’s bedroom window blew up,” Mestas said. “I opened the door and we all started screaming.”

In between storm systems March 31, Mestas surveyed the damage outside her home, as captured in a . She was aided by friends who offered some temporary clean-up assistance — to ensure no further damage — and comforted by neighbors who meant well but nevertheless left her with some very disturbing questions.

“I just want somebody to tell us what we need to do,” she said.

“This is not my tree,” she said about decades-old tree that crashed on the two cars parked in her driveway. “That’s not my two trees in the backyard. Somebody needs to tell us what to do because we don’t know what to do.”

All Mestas could do at the moment was explore her property with her two grown daughters, who live in the home with her, at 2213 Cornell Drive in Riverview. The home sits between Brandon and Winthrop, north of Symmes Elementary School and south of Bloomingdale Avenue off Watson Road.

It appears that a tornado touched down on the street, singling out the Mestas home for the burden of its wrath.

“I think it was a tornado, because it broke off the tops of the trees,” said Jack Lewis of Venture Excavating, on the property to tend to the emergency situation. “Usually the wind will just push [the tree].”

This was no wind, said neighbor Jamie Walczak.

“My wife said this was like the movie, ‘Twister,” where the home on one side of the street took all the damage and the home on the other side of the street got nothing and boy, that came true today,” he said.

The Walczak home, across the street from the Mestas home, required only a cleanup of debris and a dislodged gate.

Mestas was not so fortunate.

“We’ve been living here more than 30 years and that tree was a full-grown tree when we moved here, so it’s old,” she said of the tree now resting on two Saturn vehicles.

One is owned by Mestas, the second by her daughter, Kristine, who was about to visit a friend when the storm took an ugly turn and she decided against going out.

“I feel like the world is coming down on me,” Mestas said. "I really do."

Mestas, who was laid off from her job at Albertsons, is living an American dream gone sour.

“We’re three women living here on limited incomes, trying to keep from losing our house,” she said. “Are we supposed to lose our house over this? If we’ve got to put out money to clean up this mess, some bills are not going to get paid.”

As for her neighbor, on whose property the three trees stood, “he doesn’t live here anymore,” Mestas said. “The house is in foreclosure. He couldn’t make the payments so he moved out.”

Mestas said she talked to her insurance company, St. John’s, and that she was told an agent would be out “within 24 hours.”

As for her neighbors, they ventured outside their homes to see for themselves the damage that had indiscriminately picked one home to target more than the others.

“Talk about going green,” Mary Jane Oakman said, as she offered her neighbor support and surveyed the giant tree, filled with green leaves, nestled on its side. “What does this mean to me? It means to me come hurricane season we don’t have to worry about that anymore. This tree has been a big worry for us.”

For Mestas and her family, however, the worrying has just begun.