During the historic floods one year ago, three men disappeared from a homeless encampment. The bodies of Juan Carlos Sierra Campos and Isaias Serna were soon found in Lake Michigan and the Kinnickinnic River. Miguel Flores is still missing.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Gina Castro reported on the men last year. Last week in a follow-up story, she talked with the men’s families to understand how the losses are still impacting them today. She spoke with WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez about her story.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Gina Castro: When I think about the Aug. 9 flood, I remember cars being submerged in the water. I remember basements being flooded. I remember being shocked by how much water came. In Bay View, underneath a bridge...there is a well known [homeless] encampment that's been there well over a decade. It's been added to at least three different homeless outreach groups' routes that I've spoken with.
I've heard from a couple of homeless outreach volunteers, they estimate maybe five people were there that night [of the flooding]. And the river is so close to the encampment, you have to crouch to get underneath where the men were. The river swelled to 17 feet high.
The next day, one of the first men was found in Lake Michigan near Discovery World. A couple days after that, Isaias was found. And Miguel Flores, who was also there, hasn't been found yet.
Jimmy Gutierrez: The three men that were lost in the floods — Juan Carlos Sierra Campos, Isaias Serna and Miguel Flores — this piece kind of goes into who they were. Can you tell me about who Juan Carlos?
I learned about [Juan Carlos] through his older sister Isabel. He came to Appleton, Wisconsin, 24 years ago with the plan to work hard for a couple of years with his older brothers and his sister…and I guess they all worked together for about four years.
After his siblings were deported, I think things just got really hard. He didn't have the family support that he once had. And once his sister got back to Honduras, she says it became even more difficult for her to stay in touch with her brother because he didn't have a cell phone. Years would go by before she'd hear from him. And she learned that he moved to Milwaukee, and was homeless through a TV news segment.
Let's talk about Isaias and Miguel, because the thing that's different with those two is that they have family here, and they were a part of their families here.
Yeah, they both had a lot of family here in Milwaukee. Isaias had been here for several decades. He became a resident, and he had a couple kids here, and he also had kids back in Mexico. And the family I ended up speaking with for the story, those are his nieces and nephews. They actually lived within walking distance of the encampment, and they would see him every once in a while. He had been staying in and out of their basement for basically their whole lives.
There's other times that he would end up living somewhere else and get another job. But, I think his struggles with alcoholism were really cyclical and would disrupt his life and take a turn for the worse and make it hard for him to keep a consistent job. Though he was able to work at the Salvation Army for 10 years.
And then, Miguel, I heard from people…he can really make you laugh. He was just a happy, funny guy. He loved soccer. He would play soccer with his friends…drink some beers with his friends, then go work maybe 40 to 60 hours a week, with his nephew's construction company, and go sleep under the bridge.
And it's something he's been doing since he lived in Guanajuato, but that was something that he hoped would change with his life in America. That he would work harder, make a little bit more money and eventually have his own home and get his life in order.
Even within the year, Milwaukee Police and the County [Medical] Examiner's Office have still not concluded that the cause of deaths for these men was drowning. What does MPD and the examiner's office say happened when you asked them what was the cause of death? And why does a ruling like this matter?
So when I asked MPD last year if they would be the one that would decide if the victims were flood victims, they said no. They wouldn't make that decision, it would be the medical examiner's office. So then when I asked a medical examiner's office, they said they don't do that. And I think if we were able to, like, definitively know that they died of drowning, I feel like it's important for people to know what happened.
So this is a story about these three men and their families, and the struggles that they went through over the years. But you [also] get into homelessness, addiction and resources that don't exist. We talk about immigration, and then we ultimately talk about whose life is worth counting and whose isn't. So what can be taken away after reading this tragedy? What were you left with?
Addiction is so challenging. I love to read memoirs and how people try to overcome them. And so much of that decision to get sober is from that individual. They have to make that choice for themselves, and decide that they want something different. And that was what I was hearing from the Serna family, the nephews and niece of Isaias.
They would tell him consejos, like advice, to get sober, get your life in order, go to Alcoholics Anonymous, talk about your feelings, confront the shame you're feeling and talk it out. He just wasn't there yet. People sometimes need more time to overcome that.
But something that the family was saying that they want to do differently, is among their family, with their siblings, they're going to talk things out. They want to work through their emotions and their troubles together and that be their coping mechanism.
But they also hope that the city, the police or these homeless outreach organizations and volunteers will also go by these encampments and inform people about how cold the weather is or whether a flood's coming because they don't have phones giving them flood warning notifications like the ones I got on my phone that night. Care for people in the community. And care about the people around you.
