Mom shelters bus full of kids from storm

For Sarah Traxler, it just came naturally.

The mother of three had an ear to the phone and an eye on the weather Thursday when she caught the unusual sight of a school bus pulling in front of her house.

She peeked out the door to get a better look at the bus -- they don't typically stop in Brookhaven, her Campton Township subdivision -- and saw it was full of teenagers.

"I knew the tornado was coming, or at least a big storm," she said. "So I went out and said, 'You need to get off the bus and get in my house.'

" 'Get. In. My. House.' "

For the next 30 minutes or so, a bus driver and about a dozen teenagers huddled in her basement.

The driver had been trying to drop the students closer to their homes than usual when the severe weather hit.

They were drenched as they filed into the house.

"I got some towels, and they dried off," said Traxler, whose own children weren't home from school yet.

"They called people on cell phones and talked and checked out the huge river that was growing between our house and the neighbor's," she added. "They were all very well-behaved and calm and appreciative."

Holly Evans was working in Wheaton when she heard from her son Cameron, a freshman at St. Charles North High School.

"He wanted to let me know he was safe at Mrs. Traxler's house," Evans said.

"He said, 'We're all here.' I said, 'The whole bus?' "

Traxler said she didn't do anything special: "What was I going to do? Let the kids sit in the bus in front of my house? I think it's something anybody would have done."