The Crawford County flooding that tore through southeastern Missouri early Friday left one family with a question no one can yet answer: where is Faith Gregory?

The 23-year-old was last seen clinging to the front of a kayak as floodwaters carried her away from her collapsing home. As of now, she remains the only person known to be missing in the area — and her family is pleading with anyone nearby to help search.

What Happened That Morning

It began around 3:30 a.m., in the unincorporated community of Davisville.

The Huzzah Creek had been rising fast. At the home Gregory shared with her boyfriend, Logan Ousley, off Highway V, the water pushed hard enough against the structure that a wall gave way.

They had moments to react.

Gregory, Ousley and their four dogs managed to get into a green and tan kayak — a small vessel against a creek that had become something else entirely.

Ousley made it out of the water.

Gregory did not. Neither did the dogs.

The Search

Throughout Friday, boats and dive teams from multiple agencies worked the waterways, scanning for any sign of her.

One detail offered a flicker of hope, and also a warning about how far the current carried things: one of the dogs was found alive eight miles from the couple’s house.

Three remain unaccounted for — an Akita, a Husky, and a smaller black Labrador mix.

The Sullivan Fire Protection District’s swift water rescue team also pulled two other people to safety from a nearby home on Highway V, a reminder that the danger was not isolated to one address.

A Sister’s Plea

Gregory’s sister, Kayla Nichols, has taken the search to social media, asking residents in Cherryville and Davisville to do what emergency crews cannot do everywhere at once: walk the creeks and call out her name.

“Please everyone that lives down in Cherryville (or) Davisville, check the creeks (and) yell her name,” she wrote on Facebook. “Please help me find my sister.”

Her words carry the particular urgency of someone who knows that in flood searches, hours matter.

“Please pray, please look for her,” Nichols said.

What Searchers Should Look For

Nichols has shared identifying details in the hope that someone in the area might recognize her sister.

• Height: roughly 4 feet, 10 inches
• Weight: approximately 130 pounds
• Distinguishing feature: a prominent scar on the left side of her face

When she was last seen, Gregory was wearing a tie-dyed hoodie, pajama shorts and muck boots — clothing that suggests just how suddenly the emergency arrived. She was not dressed for a flood. She was dressed for bed.

She was holding onto the front of the kayak.

Why These Floods Are So Dangerous

Flash flooding in rural Missouri carries risks that are easy to underestimate from a distance.

Creeks like the Huzzah can rise with startling speed, particularly at night, when residents are asleep and warnings go unheard. Water that seems manageable in daylight becomes a wall of debris and current in the dark.

Rural homes often sit close to waterways by design — for access, for the view, for the way the land was settled generations ago. That proximity becomes a liability in minutes.

And the terrain that makes the area beautiful also makes searching it slow. Winding creeks, dense brush, and downed trees create countless places for a person to become trapped, and countless places for searchers to miss.

The Human Cost of a Statistic

Flood coverage tends to reduce these events to numbers: inches of rain, cubic feet per second, water levels above flood stage.

But the story here is smaller and far more specific. A young woman woke to a wall collapsing. She got into a kayak with her partner and their dogs. One person made it. One dog turned up eight miles downstream.

The rest is still unresolved.

How to Help

Emergency crews continue their work, but the family is asking for community involvement — particularly from people who know the local creeks, the bends, the places where debris collects.

Anyone in the Cherryville or Davisville area who can safely check nearby waterways is being urged to do so, and to report anything they find to authorities immediately.

For now, the search continues. And a family waits.