By Eliza PARTIKA

Violet Ledford moved to the North Carolina area three years ago after her freshman year in the Glendale Unified School District. She lived in North Carolina until she was 11 years old when she moved to California to be with her grandparents. She moved back to North Carolina with her dad after her freshman year and since then she has built a life for herself in North Carolina.

When Ledford was 15, she got a job at a local bed and breakfast, the Red Rocker Inn in Asheville. She learned the hospitality trade – first cleaning and housekeeping, and then the role of manager – from the owners of the bed and breakfast. That family came to her aid when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina late last month.

Ledford currently lives with her three dogs in the Inn’s carriage house. In the morning, she makes breakfast and checks people in and out of their rooms. Her favorite thing, she told CV Weekly, is meeting all the people from different places, getting to know them and providing them with hospitality. She’s met people from across the United States – and some from as far away as Hong Kong and Canada.

“It’s fun getting to know them and getting to learn about their cultures, sharing Southern hospitality with them,” she said.

When Hurricane Helene first hit, there was no warning issued. Ledford recalled waking in the morning thinking everything was normal; the weather had been sunny. Suddenly strong wind gusts seemed to come from nowhere.

“I walked outside [when] I thought my [electric] breaker flipped in the apartment. But [when] I walked outside there were wind gusts just blowing and blowing, and I heard a tree fall. I was kind of freaking out a little bit,” she said.

Inside the Inn, guests were sitting down for breakfast in the main dining room talking to each other. By that time the power had gone out. Ledford went in the house to check on them and prepare breakfast for everyone. No one’s phone was working and the cellular networks were down.

“We were all together, trying to keep calm,” she said.

When word finally arrived about the storm, the people for whom she’d made breakfast decided to leave.

“There were only four people here during that time; I guess they were going to try and get home. I’m not sure if they made it or not. But later that day, we had just a bunch of people come looking for shelter,” recounted Ledford.

A total of 19 people took shelter at the Inn through the worst of the storm. The Red Rocker Inn is on higher ground than the rest of Asheville. Ledford immediately took to the task of caring for everyone staying in the 18-room Inn.

Each morning, Ledford would try to make the situation for her guests as normal as possible. She would walk from her home to the Inn’s kitchen and make everybody breakfast. Then they would talk together.

“We kind of just hung out together, which was fun. [We were] just trying to keep our cool, I guess. But I mean, [for us] it really wasn’t terrible,” she said.

The Inn is temporarily closed to visitors as staff fixes minor water damage and waits for power and water to return. One tree fell in the yard and $7,000 worth of food was lost during the outage; however, said Ledford, there was no other damage.

For now, she showers by boiling bottled water and transferring the hot water into bottles with holes in them. At night, she sees by the light of oil lamps and candles provided to her by the owners of the Inn.

According to initial media reports neighboring areas were isolated – literally cut off from the outside world. Hundreds of people were missing and some presumed dead. In Black Mountain, where the Inn is located, there wasn’t nearly as much damage as the Swannanoa area, where Ledford previously lived with her father and where she drove after the storm to get WiFi to make calls.

In those extremely damaged areas, Ledford said, people came out of their shelters to assess the damage. They found nearly everything had been washed away, and people were lying haphazardly in trees with their clothes ripped from their bodies, resting where the water had left them. One of Ledford’s uncles returned to his blacksmith shop after the storm to find it flooded and covered in thick mud. As he rooted through the wreckage and dug out mud, he found the bodies of children. Chimney Rock, the nearby river arts district and even downtown Black Mountain, have been completely destroyed by the floods. The storm surge was over 20 feet high.

“It’s like something out of a horror movie,” Ledford said.

One person remains with her at the Inn as they salvage what is left of his property. The man’s house was completely flooded in the storm; he, like others throughout the last few weeks, found shelter at the Inn during the worst of the storm.

“It can be a little scary, you know, when the power is out. It’s pretty scary, but thankfully, we didn’t suffer too much damage. We got a little bit of water damage, and a tree fell in the front yard. But other than that, it’s okay,” she said of current conditions.

Ledford’s grandmother, Leslie Gavin, a retired Glendale teacher who resides in Verdugo Woodlands, expressed pride for her granddaughter’s bravery but has been greatly concerned for her wellbeing. In the first few days after the destruction, Gavin desperately tried to contact Ledford, but all the phone lines were down. Even now, service is spotty and it is often several days between their conversations.

“She’s a trooper, responsible beyond her years,” said Gavin. “When the storm hit, she was getting people to safety inside the B&B so they could be in a dry place. She was doing everything to help others. With no water to flush toilets, she found a man whose well had flooded and had him put water in containers to take back to the Inn for people to use for flushing. What she was doing to help others survive was incredible,” she said.

Family friend and Glendale resident Vic Pallos wrote to the CV Weekly to share Ledford’s story.

“Black Mountain is her home and she wants to remain and continue helping the people of Asheville and the community recover. When she visits Glendale again, likely next January, she will have plenty of stories to tell,” he said.

Ledford told the CV Weekly the best thing to do to help would be to send water and non-perishable food as they don’t have reliable access to either resource. She’s taking this emergency one day at a time, but even in the midst of chaos she loves what she does and thinks she may want to go to college for hospitality.

“I’m going to stay here for a while [and] figure out what’s next for me,” she said.