A Belton father recounts waiting to hear from his daughter after she was caught in the catastrophic Guadalupe River floods on July 4th.
BELTON, Texas — What should have been Ronnie Schoepf’s biggest day of the year turned into a parent’s worst nightmare when a single text message changed everything.
“We got a message out of the clear blue that [said] ‘hey, I’m OK, but I had to swim for my life,'” Schoepf recalled.
The message came from his daughter Riata Schoepf, who was celebrating the Fourth of July weekend with her boyfriend’s family at the River Inn Resort in Hunt, Texas, when catastrophic flash flooding struck in the early morning of July 4th.
Ronnie Schoepf, who owns a restaurant in Belton, was preparing for their annual Independence Day celebration — complete with parades, fireworks, and what’s typically their busiest day. Instead, he tried to reach his daughter as sparse satellite messages trickled in throughout the day.
“At first we thought, you know, oh OK, well you had to go up the hill a little bit or something,” Ronnie Schoepf said. “We had no idea that it was 30 feet of water.”
The restaurant owner knows about floods firsthand. Water marks still visible on his restaurant walls show where floodwater reached during a 2011 flood that filled the entire establishment. But this was different. This was his daughter.
According to the Schoepf family, the nightmare began at 2:30 a.m. when someone started banging on doors at the resort, warning everyone to evacuate due to rising floodwaters. Guests rushed to their cars, but they were trapped with only one way out and the bridge was already impassable.
“As the water started rising on everybody’s cars, people started getting out of their cars and trying to run up the road,” Ronnie Schoepf explained. “Eventually, the current started pushing them so they had to swim.”
Riata and others found themselves fighting for their lives against the powerful current. Good Samaritans at a nearby house became unlikely heroes, dropping sheets from a second-story window to protect survivors.
For Ronnie Schoepf and his wife, the hours crawled by with little communication. The family later learned that survivors used satellite connections to send messages, explaining why responses were infrequent.
“We couldn’t figure out why there was no response. It didn’t make sense to us,” Ronnie Schoepf said. “As the day went on, instead of getting more comfortable, you were getting more concerned.”
The couple even tried to drive to the scene to pick up their daughter, but were turned back at Marble Falls due to road closures.
Nearly 19 hours after the flooding began, the Army finally rescued Riata and the group at 9:15 PM on Friday, taking them to an elementary school for medical evaluation.
“It was really good to see her. It was a relief. We felt very blessed,” Ronnie Schoepf said of their reunion.
But even in his joy at having his daughter home safe, Ronnie Schoepf’s heart breaks for other families still searching for missing loved ones. With 173 people still unaccounted for, search and rescue operations have shifted to recovery efforts.
“We know that there’s a lot of folks that didn’t get to have that happy reunion and are still searching,” Ronnie Schoepf said. “That part’s hard for our daughter, it’s hard for any of us to think about. But there’s no doubt we feel blessed and very happy to have Riata home.”
The Schoepf family’s experience reinforced their faith and gratitude while deepening their compassion for those still suffering.
“We wouldn’t trade that for anything,” Ronnie Schoepf said of having his daughter home. “We wish that every story had a happy ending.”
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