Joseph Dalton died protecting family from tornado
Cassandra Diket heard the sirens while she was at work.
"Be careful," her partner texted.
She had been through severe weather in Tennessee before. She always made it out just fine.
"I knew it was different this time," she said.
Racing home in the storm
Diket quickly sent a text back without checking it over for spelling errors.
It was late afternoon on Saturday, and her coworkers shut and locked the doors. Nobody was going in or out.
Her partner, Joseph Dalton, was at home with their 10-year-old son and Dalton's mother.
"?," he texted Diket back.
That was the last she heard from him. "I got this terrible feeling, and I wanted to start crying," Diket said.
Their mobile home on Nesbitt Lane in
Madison was in the path of a violent tornado with winds up to 125 miles per hour. It was part of a larger storm system producing other tornadoes across Middle Tennessee, including one in Clarksville that traveled 43 miles before breaking apart, leaving behind a path of destruction.
Diket desperately called and texted Dalton. Her calls went unanswered.
It was just before 5 p.m., and she couldn't stand it anymore.
"I have to go," she told her boss. "I have a family. They're in our mobile home."
She got her keys and left, driving through the rain and dark to find her family.
As she approached their home, she saw only a pile of debris.
"There's absolutely no way anyone in there is alive," she thought.
The only source of light came from the dizzying flash of the ambulances and fire trucks on the street.
Diket saw Dalton's mother. Finally, she saw her son.
"I grabbed him and ran to the ambulance," Diket said. "But I was still thinking about his dad."
Putting the pieces together
Diket's 10-year-old son is slowly remembering what happened that night.
"He said he remembers his dad holding his hands and telling him it will be OK," Diket said. "Then he said he remembers everything spinning."
Dalton was lying on top of his son and his mother while they all huddled in the bathtub, the safest place inside the mobile home, Diket said. He was using his body to protect them.
"He's my hero," Diket's son told her. Powerful winds swept the mobile home off its foundation and into the air. It landed on top of a neighbor's mobile home.
Police said Floridema Garcia Perez and her 2-year-old child were in that home. They were both killed.
'I lost him'
Diket spent hours standing in the cold and dark, waiting for confirmation of her worst fears.
"I just wanted to know exactly what was going on," she said.
Finally, officials told her Joseph Dalton was dead.
"He was my best friend and the love of my life," Diket said. "I know he was being brave. I lost him, but I feel like my son wouldn't be alive without him."