From top, Mother Michelle Kreider, son Michael "Mikey' Kreider and daughter Haley "Lexi" Kreider died when a tornado struck Concord, Alabama, on April 27, 2011.CONCORD, Alabama --- From the moment Dustin Kreider learned his little girl had been killed in last week's tornado, his thoughts began to spin.
What of his 10-year-old son, Mikey? What of his wife, Michelle?
"You keep thinking, 'Maybe I'll get to keep one person,'" he said. "It just don't seem real."
But it was real.
Precocious, outgoing 8-year-old Lexi was gone. Shy, solid, smiling Mikey was gone, too. Michelle -- his childhood sweetheart -- would never come home.
"They were my world," Kreider said. "If I could leave now and be with them, I would."
On the day of the storm, Dustin was at work. Michelle, he said, had taken her brother home to Cullman and, along with the kids, was headed back to their Concord home.
As the storm approached, authorities said, she realized she couldn't beat it so she stopped at the garage apartment of a family friend, Ernest Mundi. The tornado slammed into Concord just as they arrived.
Mundi, Michael, Lexi and Mikey were found in the debris field about 120 yards away, all within six feet of each other. Lexi was taken to Children's Hospital, where she died. The others died at the scene.
Dustin panicked when he couldn't reach his wife that afternoon or all night. "I knew something wasn't right," he said.
He found Lexi when he started calling hospitals the next morning. She was eventually matched to him because of her "Bama Princess" T-shirt. Mikey was identified next, and later Michelle.
Dustin and Michelle married in 2000 but had been together off and on since they were 11 or 12. They went to both the Hueytown High School junior and senior proms together.
"We just hit it off. We were good together," he said. "We went through bad times and good times, but there was something between us."
Michelle, 30, was planning to go back to school. "She was a good wife and a great mother," he said. "She would do anything for her family."
While Mikey was quiet, Lexi was outgoing, said Concord Elementary School guidance counselor Renae Roszell. "Mikey watched the parade," she said. "Lexi led the parade."
Mikey liked to take things apart and put them back together. "He left a mess wherever he went," Kreider said. The boy played baseball until this year, when he switched to karate. "He was a big kid but easy on his feet," Kreider said. "He would have been good at whatever he did."
Lexi, he said, was a daddy's girl who liked dolls, teddy bears, dressing up and playing with makeup. She also loved to draw and pick flowers. "She was all girl," Kreider said, "and he was all boy."
Their classmates remembered them this week. "Me and Mikey got Good Citizen awards together," said fourth-grader Madison Humes, 10. "That means we did good things."
Third-graders made cards in Lexi's memory. "One little boy said, 'We've got to have glitter. We've got to have glitter because Lexi sparkled,'" Roszell said.
News staff writers Carol Robinson and Marie Leech wrote this report.