Husband and Wife Hug the ‘Heroes’ Who Saved Them from Hurricane (Exclusive)

A year ago, as the floodwaters from Hurricane Helene surrounded their home in Marion, N.C., Lois Hawkins and her husband, Kenneth, said their goodbyes and began reminiscing about the best days of their 40-year marriage.

That’s when Lois caught a glimpse of orange outside their window and realized rescue workers were nearby. She began banging on the glass, desperate to get the attention of the swift water rescue team. 

“We had decided we weren’t going to make it and we were talking to God like he was sitting there with us,” Lois tells PEOPLE. “We’re old people and we’ve lived a long time, and we decided we were ready to go.”

Lois, an 80-year-old retired nurse, and Kenneth, an 89-year-old retired engineer, had for hours been watching the waters rise and rise in Marion, about an hour outside of Asheville.

They had been told to evacuate ahead of Helene — which initially made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, 2024, before carving a path of destruction across the South — but they stayed because Kenneth was in poor health and their 19-year-old cat, Lulu, was sick as well and they worried a shelter wouldn’t accommodate their pet.

They went to bed nervous but not terribly worried on Sept. 26. The next morning, though, the rains turned relentless — swelling the river near their home, the water rushing faster, faster.

“I was becoming very concerned,” says Lois. “I didn’t know what we were going to do. It seemed like in 30 minutes the water was about a foot high and coming straight at us.”

The couple tried desperately to find a way out — to no avail. So they started trying to climb as high as they could in their house, where they had lived for decades. 

“I remembered the dresser I’d bought recently and I moved a ladder next to it and we both got into position,” Lois says. (They placed their cat on a top shelf in a nearby closet.)

Kenneth curled up on top of the dresser, his legs pulled to his chest, while Lois stood on the ladder, climbing one rung at a time as the water got higher and higher. She had just two rungs left to climb before they were saved.

“There was about a foot and a half from the ceiling, there was only that much air space to survive in at that point,” Kenneth remembers. “The water was coming in through the vents and the floor, there was sewage coming in and debris floating everywhere.”

The force of the water had toppled their refrigerator; the beds, their other furniture, their clothing floated around them.

“The thing that bothered me the most was I didn’t want him to die and me watch, and I did not want to die and leave him in that position where he couldn’t get down and get help,” Lois says. 

For a time, it seemed like there was no escape.

“The water was getting really deep and it was getting dark and we were talking about how we would die,” Lois says. ‘We wanted to die together. We knew we were going to be gone soon — I was shivering after being in the water for so many hours. We were sure we were going to die and go to heaven.”

Then the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission Swift Water Team arrived, led by Sgt. Tim Godwin.

His crew had just brought two men to safety and were doing one last pass through the area when, Godwin says, one of his teammates heard Lois. Then they spotted Lois in the window but couldn’t get their boat close enough to the house.

“We jumped in the water and swam across the front yard to get to the front door and had to pry it open,” Godwin says. 

Lois calls Godwin’s team her “heroes”: “He said, ‘Put your arms around my neck and hold as tight as you can.’ ”

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Though the couple made it to safety, they lost almost everything, including their house. 

But in the year since, volunteers with Baptists on Mission have worked to build the Hawkins a residence in the exact same spot as part of a larger reconstruction work the religious nonprofit is doing.

In July, Lois and Kenneth were given the keys to their new home in a ceremony that also reunited them with the rescue team from last year.

“It’s just a proud moment to see it come full circle. It gives me goosebumps. There were a lot of hugs,” Godwin says.”

Kennth agrees: “It was exceptional. My wife was hugging every one of them!”