Coco Grieshaber, an 8-year-old Camp Mystic alumna, threaded beads into a homemade bracelet at her dining room table, sharing memories of the Texas summer camp that she left four days before flooding devastated the area on Fourth of July weekend.

"At a time like this, there is really no other way to help than just letting them know that we're thinking about them."

Eight-year-old girls at sleep-away camp, families crammed into recreational vehicles, local residents traveling to or from work. These are some of the victims.

Taaffe called the counselors at Camp Mystic “heroes” and wore a tie to honor them and the young girls who died during the Central Texas flood.

Bubble Inn saw generations of 8-year-olds enter as strangers and emerge as confident young ladies equipped with new skills from the great outdoors and lifelong friends – bonds that would one day prove vital in the face of unfathomable tragedy.

When Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp for girls nestled in Texas Hill Country, experienced catastrophic flooding on July 4, Executive Director Richard “Dick” Eastland worked as quickly as he could to get his campers to safety.

Many of the 650 campers and staffers at Camp Mystic were asleep when, at 1:14 a.m., a flash-flood warning for Kerr County, Texas, with “catastrophic” potential for loss of life was issued by the National Weather Service.