Harvey terror didn’t faze ‘Citizen Hero’

At first glance, Virgil Smith looks and acts like a typical 13-year old — a soft-spoken, sports-obsessed Texans and Rockets fan who loves playing “NBA2K” online with friends.

But the raging floodwaters of Hurricane Harvey turned this shy teenager into a “citizen hero.”

When Virgil’s hometown of Dickinson was drenched in the wee hours of Sunday, Aug. 27, he was locked in an online video game matchup with his friend, Keshaun. The rain and thunder outside provided a noisy soundtrack to their competition, but Virgil paid the weather little mind.

“I checked out my window first and I was like, ‘Nah, it ain’t nothing,’” Virgil recalled in an interview this week. “It was raining but didn’t look like nothing that would flood. Then, in about an hour, the whole apartment just got flooded super quick.”

Water poured in after Virgil’s mother, Lisa Wallace, opened the front door of the family’s first-floor apartment. In a panic, Wallace, Virgil and his older sister, Diamond, grabbed as many things as they could and got out, the water rising to nearly above their heads. Two men helped Lisa up nearby stairs to a neighbor’s apartment on the second floor, while Virgil swam with his sister to the stairs.

When Virgil reached the top step, though, he received a cellphone call from Keshaun, pleading for help. Keshaun and his family were stranded by floodwaters in their apartment, about 50 yards away and across the courtyard. Virgil raced down the stairs back to his apartment and sprang into action. Wading through water that was up to his head, Virgil grabbed a full-sized air mattress in a closet that his family used for guests and swam with it in the darkness toward the back door of Keyshawn’s apartment.

“The water started getting higher, so we went outside to see if we could see something and we saw (Virgil) swimming around,” Keshaun later told the online TV program “SoulPancake.”

Virgil dragged the air mattress to the back window of Keshaun’s building and began lifting members of his friend’s family onto the air mattress one by one — Keshaun and his two sisters, his brother and baby brother, as well as his mom and stepdad.

The two men who had helped Virgil’s mother now assisted him in steering the air mattress full of neighbors back to the stairs on the other side of the courtyard, where they went up to the second-floor apartment.

By the time the floodwaters had filled with debris, making it unsafe for swimming, Virgil had helped 17 people to safety, swimming with the air mattress in tow to get them to higher ground.

News of his actions ultimately reached the Medal of Honor Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, which awarded Virgil one of its five annual Citizen Hero awards.

The field of 20 finalists included two other Texans: Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale of Houston, a mattress business owner who sheltered Harvey victims, and Stephen Willeford of Sutherland Springs, who helped take down the gunman responsible for 26 killings at First Baptist Church in November.

To Virgil, though, his actions were no big deal.

“It was my friends and family,” Virgil said nonchalantly, almost shrugging. “I wasn’t afraid of drowning or nothing.”

Virgil’s heroic acts stunned his mother, who watched from the top of the stairs as her asthmatic son dragged the air mattress back and forth to the homes of trapped neighbors four different times.

“It amazed me, but I know he can swim,” Wallace said. “He’s been swimming since he was 7, so I knew that wasn’t a problem. I had a little fear, but once we got to those stairs, that was it. I gave it to God and left it there.”

Dickinson hard hit

Virgil’s family lived in the Pine Forest Apartments in Dickinson, a small city of about 21,000 in Galveston County about 30 miles southeast of downtown Houston, a straight shot down Interstate

45.

The city was hammered by Harvey, which damaged countless homes and darkened businesses. Gov. Greg Abbott paid a visit Friday to the home of one Dickinson family whose home suffered heavy flooding, praising the efforts of volunteers helping them to rebuild.

In the chaotic pre-dawn darkness of Aug. 27, the families at Pine Forest, like thousands in the Houston area, suddenly had to figure out how to escape flooded homes. Fortunately they had Virgil.

After Keshaun’s family was brought to safety, Virgil spotted his friend, Donovan, waving his arms frantically about 20 yards from the second-floor apartment. Virgil hauled the air mattress over to Donovan and helped him onto it. He then swam back toward Keshaun’s apartment, where a woman who’d recently had knee surgery was stranded with her son.

“When he got to Sharon, the water was up to her neck and she couldn’t move,” Lisa Wallace said of the woman.

After ferrying this group to safety, Virgil was nearly spent. Fire ants were crawling all over him, and his stamina was beginning to wane.

Suddenly, a beam of light flashed from across the street, roughly 70 yards away, and Virgil heard a scream. With little time to think, he plunged back into the floodwaters with the mattress, swimming furiously toward the light.

An elderly woman in a wheelchair and her grandson had waved a flashlight from their submerged apartment.

Virgil swam to the apartment, the mattress beginning to wilt from the weight of its previous passengers. Virgil broke the apartment window to get to the woman, the water nearly clearing her head as she sat frozen in panic. Her grandson was having a seizure, so Virgil helped calm him before piling both of them and their small dog, locked in a crate, onto the air mattress. He got them all back to the second-floor apartment, his final rescue mission complete.

“About 10 minutes after that,” Virgil recalled, “my air mattress burst.”

‘How old is he?’

Word of Virgil’s heroics spread quickly throughout the region. A NASA astronaut sent him memorabilia. The Hitchcock Education Foundation, in concert with the local police department, honored him with an award.

“My first reaction was certainly that (Virgil’s actions were) remarkable, but on top of that, how old is he? Can we get him in the police academy?” joked Hitchcock Police Chief John Hamm, who along with members of the Hitchcock Education Foundation and Hitchcock Chamber of Commerce joined Virgil and his family for an interview this week with a Chronicle reporter.

The storm’s aftermath has been bittersweet. Hurricane Harvey displaced Virgil and his family, who had to live in motels in Texas City before moving in with Virgil’s aunt in Hitchcock. The family had been anxiously awaiting word from the Federal Emergency Management Agency about housing assistance, and just recently learned that it would be placed in a home for a year.

Virgil even got ataste of Hollywood fame. In partnership with the film “Wonder,” the online TV program “SoulPancake” surprised Virgil at football practice at Crosby Middle School in Hitchcock, filming his team giving him a standing ovation.

“You could tell he’s so shy, he just wanted to turn around and go back,” said Monica Cantrell of the Hitchcock Chamber. “He doesn’t even want the attention. That’s why he’s so deserving. This is not his personality; he’s so low key.”

Virgil is not comfortable in the spotlight, even chiding his mother for telling people about his Citizen Hero award.

“My momma (has been) going to stores, telling people out the blue,” he said. “I don’t like that.”

And while his actions during Harvey demonstrate courage beyond his years, Virgil is not impervious to fear.

To receive his Citizen Hero award, Virgil and his mother will have to fly to Washington, D.C., for the March 23 ceremony. The teen has never set foot on an airplane.

“Yeah,” he said with a sheepish grin, “I’m kind of scared of that.” nick.powell@chron.com