Volunteers with Cajun Navy 2016, a Louisiana-based disaster relief group that formed after Hurricane Katrina, went on a life-changing mission on Oct. 12 when they did a welfare check on a 104-year-old "angel" living in the North Carolina mountains after Hurricane Helene.
The woman, Jo Jane, was in good health, living with her son, when volunteers arrived, but she had a wound on her leg that required immediate care to avoid infection, according to Cajun Navy 2016 founder and CEO Jon Bridgers.
"We always tell people: Try 911 first for help. If they can't help you or if there's no response, message our page," Bridgers told Fox News Digital. "We do our best to check each and every one of them. And that's what kind of happened with Ms. Jo Jane. … Somewhere down the line, her daughter reached out to us."
Bridgers explained that the day before they received the message from Jo Jane's daughter requesting a welfare check, they had cleared some roads in the area where she lived, coincidentally making it a bit easier to check on the 104-year-old woman than it would have been otherwise.
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"We cleared stuff. The next day, we got Jo Jane's message, and it was top priority. We dropped everything. We sent a crew up there," Bridgers said.
They eventually made contact with Jo Jane's son, Jack, who is in his late 70s, and asked to speak with Jo Jane.
"After a few minutes, she came out of her bedroom with her little walker and came to the living room and sat in a little rocking chair she's got there, and she was just kind of amazed with us just standing there; we came up the mountain to check on her," Bridgers said.
Bridgers added that he "will never forget" the moment Jo Jane asked, "Who are y'all?" and Bridgers explained they were the Cajun Navy and that they were there to check up on her. Jo Jane then asked the volunteers who sent them.
"We're a faith-based group, so we're the hands and feet of Jesus, so all this, we do for him. So, we pretty much told her, ‘Well, Jesus asked us to come up here and check on you up here on top of this mountain,’" Bridgers explained. "Look, I'm a tough guy … and it takes a lot to really make me break down, but the next statement she said was, 'Can you ask him a question for me?' And we said, ‘Yeah, most definitely.’ She said, ‘Well, I want you to ask why he hasn’t taken me home yet. I've been praying and praying for him to take me home, and he hasn't done it.'"
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Another volunteer spoke up then, telling Jo Jane, "He still needs you to be here to handle some other things. What that is, we don't know, but he's not ready for you right now."
Since that moment, an unbreakable bond has been established between Cajun Navy 2016 volunteers and Jo Jane, Bridgers added.
In video updates posted to Cajun Navy 2016's Facebook page since that initial meeting, Jo Jane can be seen speaking about the encounter and opening letters from her fans across the country.
"You know, God sent somebody all the way from wherever, Louisiana or wherever, up here to help me heal this leg. Now, you know God is good," Jo Jane can be heard saying in one video.
In another, she explains her resiliency, stating her belief that Christianity is "attitude and motive."
"So, when you check your motive, which is helping people, and then you do your attitude, and you all are a happy group … one of these days, you're going to go up. Well, when we get up there to the Lord, we're going to have a good time. We're going to have a good party. It's going to be a lot of fun," she said.
Bridgers described Hurricane Helene as a "once-in-a-thousand-year" event impacting people in the mountains who are not equipped for massive flooding and mudslides that have killed at least 227 people across the Southeast, including 99 people in North Carolina alone.
Cajun Navy 2016 was able to deliver essential supplies to Jo Jane and hundreds of other Hurricane Helene survivors.
