During Christmastime in 2022, a severe blizzard hit western New York and caused dozens of deaths in Erie County. Casey Maccarone’s mom, Monique Alexander, was one of them.
Maccarone told CNN that her mother loved to walk in their Buffalo neighborhood.
On Christmas Eve, Alexander, 52, decided to head out and told her daughter she’d be right back.
Many stores had began closing that day, as news circled about a blizzard that would drop more than 50 inches of snow in some areas.
Maccarone told the outlet that her mom didn’t mention where she was going, but she figured her mom just wanted to make it to the stores before they closed.
Tragically, her mother never made it back to the residence.
"We were waiting for her to come home," she recalled to CNN.
"I knew something was wrong right away though, so I kind of accepted it instantly, but it’s hard knowing that she was outside for so long, too, because there were no emergency responders allowed to come outside,” Maccarone continued.
Although Alexander had weathered many storms prior to this one, the blizzard has been unlike any the city’s seen before, with the death toll surpassing that of a deadly blizzard in 1977, according to PBS.
“She’s always felt like superwoman and invincible, so I’m assuming that she just thought she could handle the conditions,” Maccarone told CNN. “Can’t really tell my mom anything, she’s going to do what she wants to do. I’m assuming she just thought she was strong enough for it.”
Alexander had left the residence around 3 p.m. on the day before Christmas, and her daughter began to worry after a few hours of not hearing from her. She posted to a Facebook group of fellow Buffalo residents looking for support through the storm.
That’s when someone messaged her saying they saw someone who matched her mom’s description.
“Can I call you?” Maccarone recalled the person asking her.
That’s when the man who'd messaged her called her in tears, explaining that he had found her mom’s body in the snow. It was later retrieved by the National Guard.
“My kids they lost their grandmother, and that was her most important role in her life … being a good grandmother,” Maccarone said. “And now they just have memories.”
