MARSHALL — Maj. Michelle Quintero of the Madison County Sheriff's Office could have stayed home. She'd spent the day before at a law enforcement conference in Greensboro and had permission to take the day off.
It was Friday, Sept. 27, and Tropical Storm Helene was lashing Western North Carolina. Quintero's daughter, Ashlynn, recalls her mother having the forethought to tell her and her brother to stay home and not attempt to drive into work from the family's Upper Browns Creek Road home in Yancey County.
But for Quintero, head of operations at the Madison County Detention Center, the call of duty couldn't be ignored in a crisis, and she didn't heed her own advice.
Trying to reach her car, she couldn't get out the front door, so she went out the back. Quickly, she became surrounded by rising flood waters
"My mom had made it to the backyard, and she had made it to one of the higher little hills, and she was standing there and holding onto this tree stump, and she was looking for a way to get across and up a bank, but the water was probably shoulder length at that last dip, and she couldn't come across," her daughter said.
"Our neighbor, Chris Robinson, tried to save her with a rope. About that time, he said it sounded like thunder, but it was probably a bunch of trees crashing," she said. "He said one big wave came, and he said when (it) hit Mom, she lost her footing. He panicked and jumped in after her."
She said that while her mother was fighting the current, her legs became pinned and she got tangled in fencing. Then, an even bigger wave of water and either a log or tree came crashing down on her.
"Chris was trying to get her dug out, and the water just keeps flowing and flowing. He had just about got her untangled, when about that time, this big tree or log came and hit both of them. Chris went under and Mom never came back up," said Ashlynn Quintero.
'She was the heart of the whole place'
Now being mourned by her family, the sheriff's office and her community, Michelle Quintero, 49, was the matriarch of a law enforcement family. Both her children also work at the sheriff's office and her husband, Isaac, works at Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution.
Yancey County Sheriff Shane Hilliard informed Coy Phillips, Quintero's brother and chief deputy at the Madison County Sheriff's Office, of her death.
"I don't know how to say goodbye. You were my everything. A sister, best friend, mom, and my hero," Phillips wrote in a Facebook post. "The world is so much colder and darker without you. Words cant express what you meant to me. I will always love you Michelle."
With the massive flooding still a threat, Quintero's body was kept overnight Sept. 27 at the South Toe Fire Department. Because the storm limited their choices, the family and Holcombe Brothers Funeral Home in Burnsville had to improvise when selecting a casket, and ultimately settled on one with a purple, glittering finish, a nod to Quintero's new, purple Jeep, which she affectionately termed "Purple Rain."
Her family and coworkers remember Quintero as a selfless, affectionate but stern figure who loved her job and had a comprehensive knowledge of law enforcement work.
"Jesus, family and work," Ashlynn Quintero said. "That's her little hierarchy. She has a coffee mug that says, 'Mom boss.' That's who she is. She handled everything. When you needed something done, she's the one you call. She was sworn as a deputy, and she ran the front office here all by herself. She dispatched here. She started at the old Marshall jail. She runs the heck out of the jail."
Madison County sheriff's Sgt. Brittany Green worked with Quintero for about 13 years, and trained under her.
"She was the heart of the whole place," Green said. "She was the person you went to for everything, especially for me and all of our employees. She was the calm in the storm of everything here."
Quintero wore many hats in her nearly 18 years working with the sheriff's office.
"There's not one thing she can't do in here, from dispatch, to front office, to the jail, there's nothing she can't do," Green said. "We're all going to miss her. It's something I don't think we'll ever truly get over."
'Strange, power of the rain'
Quintero and her husband met in 1995 in Jacksonville, where Isaac Quintero was stationed with the U.S. Marines. She was on the way to the beach with a friend when they stopped at a red light and Isaac Quintero and some friends, in the car next to them, began catcalling.
They spoke and shared laughs together that night and then lost touch. But they reconnected after Michelle Quintero came back to Jacksonville to find him.
"She came back three years later to find me, but I had moved barracks, so she was sitting on a park bench crying, because she thought she had missed me," Isaac Quintero said. "I remember I walked up and I thought she looked familiar. When I got close, I knew it was Michelle. I walked up and said, 'Why are you crying for?' She looked up at me and jumped up, and we hugged, of course.
"She said, 'I thought you left.' It was just one of those things."
Quintero's husband and daughter said the grieving process has "been tough," but added that they've aimed to stay busy amid the Hurricane Helene response.
"I'm pretty sure my kids are doing the same, just trying to stay busy, and keep our minds on other things," Isaac Quintero said.
He said he feels his wife sent a sign from above when the family honored her at the family's burial plot.
"I got her into Jeep culture, and she started calling her Jeep 'Purple Rain,' and told me about how Purple Rain translates to 'Strange, power of the rain,'" he said. "She loved that Jeep because of that. Then, when we were selecting the casket, we found one that was an off-purple. It was just her. .... Then, when we were burying her and everybody started praying for her, it started misting like rain with her purple casket. Oh my God, everybody lost it.
"It was incredible. It wasn't a hard rain or anything, it was just enough to let us know she was there."
Michelle Quintero was a self-described "extra' and "glamorous" personality. On the morning of her death, her makeup was scattered throughout her bathroom, her daughter said.
Purple Rain, the Jeep, also was showy.
"It was big and had lifted tires," Ashlynn Quintero said. "We were like, 'We have no clue why you bought this.' And she said, 'Because it's extra.' We're like, 'Yeah, that thing's extra. It's like 12 feet tall.' It had these big, purple tires."
Everybody's mom
The sheriff's office houses juvenile inmates as part of a state contract, many of whom are violent offenders. But according to Michelle Quintero's friends and family, their alleged crimes didn't prevent her from doing her best to positively influence them.
"She took care of these inmates," said Lt. George Sturges, who shared an office with her in Marshall for a number of years. "We've got quite a few that she's meant a lot to them. She's helped them through a lot of their stuff. From inmates to employees, I think she looked at some of the inmates as family, like she did the employees."
Ashlynn Quintero, 28, said her mother often would refer to the juvenile inmates as her new little brother or sister. She also recalled the experience of informing the jail trustees of her mother's death, which brought a number of them to tears.
Sturges said Michelle Quintero was like a second mother to a number of the juvenile inmates.
"I can't tell you how many times she bought Christmas gifts for them," Isaac Quintero Sr. said. "It never bothered me because that was her passion. She always made sure the kids were provided for."
Her daughter remembers many of her friends in both Yancey and Madison counties referring to her mother as "Mom."
"My best friends would walk in the house and say, 'Mom, we're home!'" she said.
Her husband said her family and friends will always carry her in their hearts.
Michelle Quintero's son, Isaac Quintero Jr., 24, a Marine veteran like his father and a deputy, said one of his biggest goals is to continue to live out the legacy she so admirably and capably exemplified for him.
"I'm going to follow in her footsteps the best I can," he said.
