Melissa Cassem still cannot make sense of what happened to her family at their home in the Sierra Nevada during a recent heavy snowfall.
In late March, the Cassems were snowed in after a historic winter storm dropped 10 to 15 feet of snow in Alta, California, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento. The family had moved to Placer County from the San Francisco Bay Area a year before. It was Melissa and husband Jason's dream home. They uprooted their lives and moved with their 9-year-old son, Geoffrey, and 11-year-old daughter, Juliana.
On March 29, a day after Melissa's 43rd birthday, a snowstorm made the roads to their home impassable and they did not have electricity.
The family home was running on a generator, and 43-year-old Jason Cassem noticed that the lights flickered. He wanted to make sure the power didn't go off while their children were getting ready for bed.
He stepped outside their front door to a nearby enclosure to top off the generator with gasoline, Melissa Cassem said. It was the last time she saw him alive.
It was pitch black outside in the rural mountain neighborhood, but she could still hear the running generator.
"I figured, he must have filled it with gas, but something's not right," she said.
She went outside and saw that a snowbank fell off their roof and onto Jason and the small enclosure where the generator was housed. She didn't think twice and grabbed a snow shovel. She climbed to the top of the mound to try and dig him out.
"He didn't answer when I started scooping," she said. "Then all of a sudden it just caved in and I dropped down."
Cassem estimates that she fell 15 feet from the top of the snow mound to the ground next to the generator enclosure, and there she found her unconscious husband, she said. They were trapped with the strong gasoline vapors in the snow pocket, and she tried to perform CPR on her husband. She started to feel lightheaded and tried to scramble out of the hole, but it was too high.
That's when she screamed for help, Cassem said.
Armed with the flashlight on their mother's phone, the two children ran in the dark to the sound of screams. Even though they didn't have a cellphone signal, Juliana knew to use the SOS feature on the phone to make an emergency call. She connected to a Placer County emergency dispatcher who instructed the children to dig through the snow with pots and pans.
The roads were covered in several feet of snow, and firefighters were at least 90 minutes away, Cassem said.
Desperately, Juliana tried to lower her legs into the hole to get her mother out.
"She was convinced she could pull me out, but I already knew I wasn't even gonna let her try because she would fall in there with me," Cassem said.
Around the same time in Missouri, Cassem's sister, Sara Marcantonio, received a frantic six-second video call from Melissa's phone but she couldn't make out who it was.
"Someone in the dark was screaming, 'Help! Jason's not breathing,'" Marcantonio said. "And then the call dropped."
Back at the snowed-in house, Geoffrey grabbed blankets and dropped them into the hole, because he thought his parents would be cold, Marcantonio said.
The snow continued to fall.
The Cassems' house is near the home of Jake Platt, an engineer with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. When Platt got the call from an emergency dispatcher that night, his wife was 8½ months pregnant. Despite his pregnant wife at home, he raced to the Cassems' home.
On a few occasions, Melissa Cassem had chatted with Platt on Facebook about the road conditions in the area. On that night, he found his way to her home and pulled her out of the hole.
"I've never actually met him in person, and then he showed up," Cassem said. "I don't know how, but I had to jump just to catch him to try to get pulled out. He pulled me straight out."
Platt was upset that he could not make it down to Jason, but he maintained his composure to praise Geoffrey and Juliana for their quick thinking, Cassem said.
"For her to still be here is amazing," Marcantonio said of her sister. "I mean, it's just a miracle."
Around 10 to 15 feet of snow was on the ground in Alta by the next day, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Cassem family believes Jason died from carbon monoxide poisoning. His death is under investigation by the Placer County Sheriff's Department, but they declined to comment.
Melissa Cassem plans to sell the family home, because they do not have life insurance and spent their life savings on their move. Friends are trying to raise funds through a GoFundMe campaign.
She's worried that she'll never see her husband's wedding ring again, because it was lost at the medical examiner's office.
"I'm still calling all around trying to figure out where it is," Cassem said. "I'm just continuing to pray that they find it. This is all hard enough."
Melissa met Jason in high school, but they didn't date until they were around 25, she said. He rode a motorcycle to their first date and for years saved a napkin from their first lunch in his wallet as a memento.
Though he had a tough exterior, he was a sentimental romantic, Cassem said. He couldn't say no to his children when they went shopping, and he taught them to play the piano, guitar and drums, Marcantonio said.
Jason always rearranged his schedule as a heating, ventilation and air conditioning specialist so he could be with his children, and though it was difficult living at their home in Alta, Melissa said he tried to make it work for them.
In her career as a behavioral specialist, Cassem has advocated for children who experienced traumatic episodes.
Now she and her children will need to process their own trauma.
Neighbors and friends are staying at the Alta home while Cassem and her children stay with Marcantonio. She cannot stand the sight of snow, and the smell of gasoline or flickering lights triggers panic attacks.
Throughout their relationship, Jason was Melissa's balance, she said. When she would come home from work stressed out and pace around their home, he would take her in his arms and play their favorite song, "Shining Star" by the Manhattans.
He was always prepared for what life had to throw at them, and tried to make his family feel safe, even on the night of the accident.
"He was just trying to make sure that the kids didn't get scared that night," Cassem said. "He was just looking out for us and protecting us. That's what he always did."
