A nailbiting clip of a Dallas ISD bus driver and bus monitor saving two children who were almost swept away in the Dallas flooding reminds us that there are still good people in the world.
The pair are crediting God for this miracle because, normally they would not have taken that route. “It had to be God to send me that way because I don’t normally go that way,” Simone Edmond said.
The bus monitor, Tekendria Valentine, captured a clip of that moment that has gone viral on social media and drawn praise for their action from all quarters.
The pair from the special education bus tied seatbelts together to get a firm hold on the two children who hung on to the trees in the floodwaters. They were also helped by neighbors who rushed to assist them in the rescue operation.
Edmond has been a Dallas ISD bus driver for 22 years and Valentine has been with them for 2 years. She said, “I’m just happy we got them out. It was super crazy though,” Valentine said.
The two barely know each other as they started working together just two weeks ago. But this incident has brought them together. “We never even met each other before,” Edmond said.
It’s another incident of divine intervention because the bus was empty and they were asked to pick up a student who missed their bus and that wasn’t their normal route, and the student was a no-show. But just around the corner, they had a larger mission to accomplish.
Valentine said, “We were just in the area, I was like maybe it was a waste of time, but then when we seen what we seen, I was like maybe that was God putting us there in that area for that reason,” she said.
The amazing part of the story is that both of them put their own lives on the line because both did not know how to swim. “That’s the thing, we don’t know how to swim, and we were like taking a chance ourselves,” they said.
The young boy and girl were stuck in the floodwaters near Belt Line and the CF Hawn Freeway and their father was trying to save their lives. “So, the mom ran out with a baby and she was like, ‘Can you call 911, 911?’” Edmond recalled.
Time was ticking by and something had to be done immediately because even though they called 911 there was no time to wait. “The little boy yelled out, ‘Help, help,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh, they’re stuck,’” Valentine said.
Then Edmond and Valentine decided to use the removable seatbelts to strap in the wheelchairs to rescue the two children. “But then we started thinking like, maybe we can tie the seat belts together and, you know, like help them.”
They tied them together and along with the neighbors they created a human chain to help pull the children to safety. “She was holding me up here, and I was holding this and I had another guy wrapped in my arms. We were holding like this, and we just extended the tie downs out until we could reach the people and pull them in,” Edmond recalled.
“The little boy, he was so appreciative of us. He got out and he was like, ‘Please, I want to give you a hug. I want to give you a hug,’ and I was like, ‘That’s fine, you can give me a hug,’” Valentine said.
There’s no coincidence that Dallas ISD’s bus lot already has a sign that reads, “Heroes work here,” because that’s 100% true. “To be honest, I got a little emotional about it because it was really inspiring,” said Dr. Angel Vales, with Dallas ISD. “I mean, it just shows the commitment our bus drivers and monitors have in the district.”
Although the two heroes still don’t know who those children were who they saved, but they know that God brought them together for this mission. “We just saw them just walk in the house like nothing happened,” Valentine said. “Like I said, it had to be God to send us that way and to make us think because we knew they needed help,” Edmond said.
