After a tornado nearly ripped the roof off his Apison home, David Schilling didn’t even take time to put on shoes before sprinting out of his basement into his pitch-black neighborhood.
The 20-year-old Southern Adventist University student had just finished unpacking belongings from his dorm room into his parents’ home on Apison Pike when the tornado forced his family to take shelter. Less than a minute later, the storm had passed and he sprang into action.
“I was all right, my family was all right and there was nothing I could do about my house,” he said. “It was this urgency to get outside, and when I did a sweep of the neighborhood, I knew there were people out there and I just took off. It was an instinct; you don’t plan on helping, you just see a need and you go.”
His first stop was the house of his closest neighbors and family friends, the Lakes. When he had driven home earlier that night, he had seen Bonnie Lake working at an office computer in front of a window, so he knew she was home.
“He won’t brag on himself, but he came to my house immediately. I still can hardly fathom that he was there that fast,” Lake said. “I hadn’t even tried to get out of the debris when I heard him holler for me – he was at my house that fast.”