*The 3-year-old girl who was found alive in Texas floodwaters clinging to her mother’s dead body has been identified, along with her heroic mom.
According to the Beaumont Police Department, her mother was named Collette Sulcer, an employee of the The Medical Center of Southeast Texas and Memorial Hermann. Her daughter’s name is Jordyn.
Officer Carol Riley told PEOPLE that Sulcer was driving on an I-10 service road with Jordyn when her car got stranded in high floodwaters. She pulled into a Plaza 10 parking lot and escaped with the toddler, but rushing waters swept them into a canal over a half mile from the car.
Collette was unresponsive and Jordyn was suffering from hypothermia when two Beaumont police officers and two Beaumont Fire Rescue divers rescued them after they spotted Collette floating.
“They were in the water for quite some time,” Riley said. “When the baby was found the baby was clinging to her. The mother did the best she could to keep her child up over the water.”
“The baby also had a backpack that was helping her float on her back and she was holding on to her mom,” Riley adds.
Collette was pronounced dead shortly after they reached an ambulance. Jordyn was eventually released into the care of family members.
Sulcer’s large family of nurses, pastors and military veterans were stunned by her death. She was described as a dedicated nurse who joined the profession after her mother, also a nurse, died several years ago.
“We’re in absolute shock,” Vanessa Jackson, 58, a cousin who is a retiree in Beaumont told the Times. “You hear about stories like this in other places, other people’s lives. Not here, not us.”
They are now working hard to care for Jordyn who has been traumatized by the loss of her mother.
“We just need to be focused now on little Jordyn, who experienced something none of us should,” Jackson said.
Michael Skolnik, a civil rights activists as well as co-founder of @WeAreSoze was so brokenhearted by Sulcer’s story that he launched a GoFundMe page for her family Wednesday night. At press time Thursday afternoon, it was just shy of $126,000, surpassing its $100,000 goal.
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