'I Feel Like Cinderella': Teen Attends Homecoming After Losing Everything in Fire
Nicolette Salvato, 15, received helped from her high school to attend the dance.
— -- After a devastating fire destroyed Nicolette Salvato's home and belongings, the teen thought she'd be robbed of attending her homecoming dance as well.
That was until the community came to her rescue.
"We are so truly blessed and grateful," mom Courtney Salvato of Haines City, Florida, told ABC News. "These are completely compassionate strangers. That's the part that I cry about. They're doing something for my daughter that I cannot. I feel like saying thank you is nothing."
On Oct. 8, Salvato's home caught fire in wake of Hurricane Matthew. She and her family had evacuated the property prior to the storm.
The blaze took firefighters over four hours to extinguish, Salvato's husband Jason Johnson told ABC News.
"We got a call at 4:30 in the morning from our neighbors saying that the house was on fire during the hurricane," Johnson said. "I don't know exactly how it started, but we're assuming that it was an electrical fire."
"[We were] devastated," he added. "We lost everything. We lost a pet in the fire as well. We were expecting to come back the next day hoping it was going to blow over and we wouldn't have much of a storm."
The fire occurred two weeks before 15-year-old Nicolette's homecoming dance.
"She had mentioned it so much and I said, 'Wait for pay day and let me see what I have to work with,'" Salvato said of her daughter. "It just so happened that the fire, the hurricane [came]. All week, she was saying, 'Homecoming is coming and I'm so upset that I can't go.'"
Salvato said her husband was at Loughman Oaks Elementary in Davenport, where their three other children attend school, picking up donations when he told school administrators that Nicolette was upset about missing homecoming.
Soon after, Loughman Oaks and Nicolette's school, Ridge Community High School, rallied to send her to the dance.
"First it was just a ticket," Salvato said. "And the next thing that was left was go to the bridal shop then the hair, makeup."
On Oct. 21, Nicolette and her family went from place to place so she could get ready for her big night.
Local businesses all donated their services. Angelique Bridal Boutique in Winter Haven, Florida, gifted Nicolette with her pink, formal dress.
Gina Lawson, the shop's owner, told ABC News that she heard about Nicolette's homecoming wish through a friend's local non-profit organization, "Graceful Gestures."
"[I said], any dress she wants, she may have," Lawson said. "[Nicolette] shed many happy tears. They were a very thankful family."
Salvato said Lawson also gave her daughter a donation of brand new clothes and a $500 Walmart gift card for her and her siblings.
"Everybody that has done something in any way are guardian angels," Salvato said. "She had a blast. She told me that she thought stuff like this only happens in the movies and before she even went she said, 'I feel like Cinderella.'"
