Tampa mother and autistic son try to stay hopeful after losing their home in Helene

TAMPA, Fla. – It would be easy to lose hope in the situation Michelle Mastrototaro and her son Bryce currently find themselves in. It is as hopeless as it is terrible.

Bryce, 16, sleeps in a Pack ‘n Play intended for a baby.

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His mother sleeps on an air mattress a few meters away.

“I get so emotional when I think about him,” Michelle said through tears. “I have dedicated my whole life to him.”

There is nothing she wouldn’t do for her son. She loved and cared for him in a way that few parents would understand.

Bryce is autistic and blind.

“He just wants to be home,” Michelle said with tears in her eyes. “I just want to be home too.”

Their Port Tampa home had never been flooded in its 111-year history until Hurricane Helene.

“I wasn’t prepared. It just kept crawling and crawling – it was almost like the water was coming so fast,” Michelle remembers. “2.77 meters.”

Michelle Mastrototaro’s home flooded for the first time in its 111-year history

Now Michelle, her husband and their children, including Bryce, sit in a small room above their flooded home.

Most of Bryce’s toys and belongings, along with his mother’s furniture, are piled on the sidewalk.

What’s left in their home is also in poor condition, including Bryce’s specialized security bed.

‘I cried. It’s just… it’s very sad,” Michelle said. “He’s in a Pack ‘n Play because there’s no room. There is no room to cook. It’s very small.”

And it gets worse. Michelle and her husband did not have flood insurance.

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“It’s put me in a place where I’m going, am I going to stay, am I not going to let this beat me?” Michelle said. ‘I don’t know what to do. I honestly don’t know.”

But a mother’s love knows no bounds, so she plays the hand Mother Nature has dealt her.

Every day, when she’s not at work and Bryce isn’t at school, she helps her blind, autistic son up and down the stairs to his hopefully temporary Pack ‘n Play and living space.

“I give him toys, you know, and he’s just happy. But he keeps asking, “I want to go home.” And I can’t give him that answer,” she said.

There are no easy answers, but there is still hope.

Of all the belongings Bryce and his mother lost in the flood, they found one item completely dry and unscathed: a hat embroidered with three words.

God has me.

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“I put it in my mailbox,” Michelle said, her voice full of emotion. “I put it in my mailbox and said, ‘God, please take over, because I can’t do it.'”

According to Michelle, Medicaid has approved a new safety bed for Bryce. However, at the moment they don’t have a house where they can place it.