The bride endured a long wait for her honeymoon. Wed in 2023, Geneva native Carissa Lefley-McCauley spent more than a year following the ceremony in a wheelchair. The spinal cord stimulator she needed to walk, due to a rare medical condition, malfunctioned, shocking her internally and forcing her to postpone the trip until she could have surgery to replace the device.
After she finally was mobile again, she and her husband, David McCauley, who also grew up in west suburban Geneva and helped her through the ordeal, booked a dream trip to Jamaica for this fall. As the trip approached last week, they worried about a tropical storm in the Atlantic, but from early forecasts, they expected it to miss them when they arrived at their hotel in Montego Bay.
When the storm grew into Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, the couple’s flight home was canceled. Unable to book another flight home, with the main airport closed, they were stranded in the storm’s path. They barricaded their room’s windows with furniture and took shelter in the bathroom.
When the storm hit, they said it seemed as if the ocean was rushing underneath them, and 185 mph winds raged like a runaway freight train all around them. The walls appeared to suck in and out with sudden changes in air pressure.
“It was terrifying,” Lefley-McCauley said.
“We just had to pray,” David McCauley added. “It was a lot of anxiety leading up to it. When the time came, there’s nothing else you can do but be thankful for the time we had together and hope for the best.”
After the storm passed, leaving devastation and death in its wake, the couple was left stuck on the island, with flights canceled and no way to get home. The delay was especially concerning because of widespread power outages and Lefley-McCauley’s condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a debilitating connective tissue disorder.
The spinal cord stimulator implanted in her back only holds a charge for about two weeks. She has a back-up battery, but any failure would leave her unable to walk independently. She has medications with her but began to be racked by pain flares, indicating her condition was worsening.
That is where the veteran-led Grey Bull Rescue stepped in. Grey Bull operates both a donor-funded nonprofit foundation and a for-profit rescue group, which assists governments and other entities with rescuing citizens from natural disasters and war zones.
Founder Bryan Stern said the group began its work rescuing Americans and allies during the evacuation of Afghanistan in 2021, and has since conducted operations in Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, Lebanon, and the United States.
The group also gave medical care to Lefley-McCauley, including a shot for the pain. Members arranged to bus some 300 Americans and others from Montego Bay to a hotel near the Kingston airport. The resort was torn up, with roofs damaged or collapsed, but had enough rooms left for shelter and food for those staying there.
The group worked with the Jamaican government to get permission to leave, and chartered two flights Friday to fly them to Tampa, Florida.
“The damage is pretty bad, depending on where you are,” Stern said. “Some is not that bad, a lot of it is pretty horrific.”
As for the honeymooners, they were grateful to be alive and anticipating going to their new home in Charlotte, North Carolina, where David McCauley works for the city as an urban forester.
“It was definitely not our choice to stay or be stranded as we’ve seen posted on social media,” David McCauley said. “It was very misleading that some flights that were listed as available were actually not even physically in Jamaica. They had been rerouted earlier but were still showing up on airline websites as departing outbound.”
The couple urged donations to help the people of Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti, many of whom were left with their homes torn apart and no power or basic necessities such as food and water.
“We’ve met the most incredible people here,” Lefley-McCauley said. “We were tearing up for the families, knowing that their homes could be gone and their family members injured.”
The couple made it to the Kingston airport and were waiting for their flight Friday afternoon.
“We are beyond relieved and ready to be home,” David told the Tribune.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/10/31/hurricane-melissa-jamaica-geneva-stranded/
