Tornado

THE VILLAGES — Vikki DiMisa remembered being awakened around 3 a.m. Friday by her 9-year-old chocolate lab, Mocha.

Mocha was scared of the thunder and lightning from the passing storm, so DiMisa went into the living room of her Village of Mallory Square home and lay on the couch to keep Mocha company.

Then it went quiet, and DiMisa thought the storm had passed.

But soon, Mocha grabbed her wrist in his mouth and pulled her to the floor, followed by pulling her black lab, Max, on top of her.

“That was the last I saw of (Mocha),” DiMisa said. Shortly after Mocha pulled her to the floor, the tornado hit, destroying her home.

The power of the tornado picked up and threw Vikki onto the ground. The flying debris caused an injury to her hand.

Her husband, Fred, was thrown from their bed by the tornado, and didn’t know at the time that Vikki had gone to the living room.

“I looked over to where I thought my wife was,” he said. “In the bed where she would have been lying was a piece of metal pipe or something that was impaled into the mattress.

“It was just kind of eerie to see that.”

DiMisa knew she was lucky.

“(Mocha) saved my life twice yesterday,” she said.

The search for Mocha started quickly, first with a thorough check of the house, which Fred said just led them to believe he was sucked out of it when the tornado roared through.

“I’ll be honest with you, this whole thing has been very traumatic for us,” Fred said. “We’ve lost our house, and then to lose a dog.”

Word quickly spread through the neighborhoods that the chocolate lab was missing, said Sheri Evans, Disaster Animal Response Team coordinator for Humane Society SPCA of Sumter County.

“We were asking them about animal issues and everybody kept asking us if we had found Mocha yet,” Evans said.

On Saturday afternoon Vikki stood in the parking lot of Laurel Manor Professional Plaza crying and trembling with anticipation. A determined team had followed every lead they got, eventually taking them, along with Fred, to the Amelia golf course at Mallory Hill Country Club where they found Mocha.

But it wasn’t an easy task trying to catch the scared lab.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been up and down a golf course that much in my life,” Evans said.

As DiMisa stood in her yellow rain jacket with her hand in a brace waiting for Mocha to arrive, she could barely contain herself.

When the pickup trucks arrived, lights flashing, she was bouncing with excitement. “Oh my gosh, he gets lights and everything,” she said as she started to cry harder.

Soon DiMisa was lying on the ground with Mocha. “Thank you so much,” she said, as she continued to hug Mocha. She promised him she wasn’t going anywhere.

The search team, along with other members of the Humane Society SPCA, stood crying and cheering for the happy reunion. “That’s why we do this,” Evans said. “This is exactly why we do this.”

Fred said when they climbed back into the car, Vikki was more optimistic about the situation they are facing. “She said we can get through the rest of it,” he said. “It was like Christmas in February for her, I assure you.”