When Mike Noriega heard that part of the condominium tower where his grandmother lived had collapsed, he rushed with his father to the scene. They arrived at a nightmarish 30-foot pile of pancaked concrete and mangled metal, the remains of her 12-story building — and no sign of 92-year-old Hilda Noriega.
But among the flying debris, they stumbled across mementos that bore witness to Hilda’s life on the sixth floor in Champlain Towers South: an old picture of her with her late husband and their infant son, and a birthday card that friends from her prayer group sent two weeks earlier with the acronym “ESM,” Spanish for “hand-delivered,” scrawled across the yellow envelope with a butterfly etching.
“There was a message in the mess of all this,” Noriega said. “It means not to give up hope. To have faith.”
Days after Thursday’s collapse, Hilda remains among more than 150 people unaccounted for in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, with five confirmed dead and authorities and loved ones fearing the toll will go much higher.
As scores of rescuers continue to use heavy machinery and power tools to clear the rubble from the top and tunnel in from below, the Noriega family still have hope she will be found alive.
“Some miracles are very big, others are small,” said Mike, 36, who last spoke to Hilda the day before the disaster. They described Hilda as a fiercely independent and vivacious retiree — in Mike’s words, “the youngest 92-year-old I know ... 92 going on 62.”
Hilda Noriega had called Champlain Towers South home for more than 20 years. But six years removed from her husband’s death, she was ready to leave. The condo was up for sale, and her plan was to move in with family.
She had loved living near the ocean and friends, but “when you lose a spouse, you want to be surrounded by family ... And she wanted to spend more time with her family and grandchildren,” said Sally Noriega, Hilda’s daughter-in-law.
Sally called Hilda a sweet, loving person who built a life with her husband and raised a family after coming to the US from Cuba in 1960.
“She was just one of those people who from the first time she met a person she instantly loved that person, and that person instantly loved her,” Sally said.