Woodstock native hunkers down during Hurricane Idalia

While the University of Tampa canceled classes and evacuated students, Woodstock native Jasmine Villavicencio stayed inside her apartment this week as Hurricane Idalia barreled toward the Florida Coast, she said.

Villavicencio, who is a University of Tampa senior, said she stayed up late Tuesday evening as the wind whipped outside her apartment, located about 10-minute drive from campus.

“We just went to bed and didn’t worry about it,” Villavicencio said.

Hurricane Idalia hit Florida on Wednesday morning, damaging trees and roofs and flooding roads. It made landfall about 200 miles north of Tampa in the Big Bend area, before heading toward Georgia and South Carolina.

Nevertheless, Villavicencio said she remained in her apartment Wednesday, due to the threat of storm surge and the potential flooding it brings.

The ordeal marked the second time in as many years that Villavicencio had a hurricane affect her college experience.

When Hurricane Ian struck the Florida Coast last year, Villavicencio said, she drove 19 hours straight, from Tampa back to Woodstock to get out of the storm’s way. She said she usually doesn’t make the trip to Tampa by land, preferring to fly when she comes to visit Illinois.

Some of Villavicencio’s classes were canceled then, she said, while others had online lectures to watch and she returned to Florida once the storm had passed.

On Wednesday, the University of Tampa announced that there had been no storm damage to the campus and classes were resuming on Thursday.

When Idalia was on its way to Florida, Villavicencio kept an eye on updates, but didn’t think the storm would be extremely severe.

“We learned about it over the weekend,” Villavicencio said. “I thought the tropical storm would stay a tropical storm.”

Getting from Illinois to hunkering down in a hurricane in Florida was a journey that began when she was student at Woodstock High School and took a trip through Global Leadership Adventures.

When Villavicencio was a high school student, she had the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica.

The trip made such an impact on her that not only did she study International Studies in college, she went back to Costa Rica for a study abroad trip when she was a sophomore at Tampa, she said.

“I went back because of that experience,” Villavicencio said.

I always knew I wanted to make an impact abroad.”

—  Jasmine Villavicencio, Woodstock student

When it came time for college, she said as a first-generation college student “choosing a school was a complicated thing.”

Her brother being at Tulane was a reason for her to go to school further south.

“I always knew I wanted to go somewhere far away,” Villavicencio said. “I was looking at Florida schools.”

Her mother, Amy Lienhard, said she was “definitely worried” about her children going to school in hurricane-prone areas.

Villavicencio said she has been abroad a few times since arriving in the Sunshine State. In addition to Costa Rica, she went to the Maldives, accompanying her boyfriend on a marine biology trip there.

“I helped with data collection and field work,” Villavicencio said.

Earlier this year, she heard about the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, which is run by the U.S. Department of State and gives students funding to study abroad. She applied, got accepted and traveled to Indonesia for six weeks this past summer.

“It wasn’t somewhere I thought I would go,” Villavicencio said. “When am I ever going to go to Indonesia?”

She said she is very passionate about human rights and environmental issues, and was able to explore her interests in Indonesia.

“When I was there, I was doing bird observation,” Villavicencio said. “Birds are a good indication of how the environment is doing.”

She’s currently applying for a Fulbright scholarship, and if she receives it, she plans to be an English teacher in Mexico.

Even with the hurricanes and being far away from her hometown, Villavicencio said she is glad she wound up at the University of Tampa.

“I love my school very much,” Villavicencio said.

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that the trip Jasmine Villavicencio took when she was a high school student was through Global Leadership Adventures.

The AP contributed