International News

MOORE, Okla. (AP) Sabrina Mitchell is used to looking for silver linings.

As a 5-year-old, she searched for them after the May 3, 1999, tornado destroyed her family's home in Moore. She's trying to find them again now, after Monday's tornado destroyed the family's home, which had been built on the same spot.

The EF5 twister killed 24 people, injured at least 377 and left behind a bleak landscape of empty lots wiped clean of the structures atop.

When Mitchell's home was destroyed in 1999, the storm swept the property away. This time, much of the first floor remains, but the upstairs level was sheared off. The family plans to sell the lot and leave Moore, but it's too early to know where they'll land.

"I'm just trying to find the good in all this," Mitchell, 19, said. "It's hard."

A full-time education student who holds down two jobs as a server at restaurants in nearby Norman, Mitchell wants to teach third grade students. She'll have plenty of real-life examples to pass on including lessons about coping with adversity and helping others. She acknowledges she's seen more in 19 years than many will see in a lifetime, but the experiences have toughened her and given her the ability to relate to the struggles of others.

"I have seen a lot. I don't think more mature, necessarily, but maybe I'm a little more empathetic and sympathetic to people who've been through this," she said.