Overlooking a grassy soccer field behind Bulverde Creek Elementary School, is a mural of a soccer ball kicked by a cleat engulfed in ribbons of green, blue and red.
A small metal plaque nailed right in the middle of the piece reads, “A dedication to Madelyn ‘Emmy’ Jeffrey: Your memory will live on in our hearts and on the field that brought you so much joy.”
It’s a permanent reminder of Madelyn, one of more than 100 people who died as a result of the Hill Country flooding last summer. At the time, she had just graduated from Bulverde Creek Elementary School in the North East Independent School District.
She was only 11 years old.
On Monday, exactly two months from the anniversary of the July 4 flooding of the Guadalupe River, the Bulverde Creek community gathered in memorial of Madelyn, sharing stories, music and unveiling her mural, which was created by the school’s PTA.
“To many of you here, she was ‘Maddy’ but to me, she has always been Emmy,” said her mom, Alicia Jeffrey Baker. “In some ways, it feels impossible that so much time has passed. In other ways, it feels like it was only yesterday that we heard her laugh, watched her run across the soccer field, or listened to her tell stories about her day.”
Her friends described Madelyn as kind, funny, curious, quick to forgive and an avid soccer player.
“’Maddy’ may have been with us for a short time, but the impact that she’s made is immeasurable,” said Milsi Perez, principal at Bulverde Creek.
Madelyn’s family and school friends were joined by several school district officials and her old club soccer team, who donated new soccer goals and nets to the school in her honor.
“She lives on with her club team as their forever 12th player,” said Jeffrey Baker, who teaches at Tuscany Heights Elementary School, a few miles away.
After the mural was unveiled, her old soccer mates made their way to the mural, to read her plaque and take a picture.
Monday’s memorial also featured a performance from the choir at Tex Hill Middle School, where Madelyn was supposed to attend sixth grade.
In the fifth grade, students are asked to fill out course cards, making plans for what they want to do once they get to middle school. Madelyn selected the choir in her card.
Madelyn was staying in her grandparents’ cabin in Hunt when it was swept away during the early hours of July 4 when the river quickly rose over 20 feet.
A few days later, emergency responders would find the remains of her grandparents, Penelope Jeffrey and Emlyn Jeffrey, but it took almost a week after the flooding to find Madelyn.
Since their deaths, Madelyn’s mother has been at the forefront of calls for lawmakers to reform flood warnings, advocating for warning systems based on the precise level of river rise and sharing her experience on the disorganized emergency response that ensued in the hours and days after the tragedy.
Jeffrey Baker said her family had been summering by the Guadalupe River since 1990. It was their “happy place.”
“The river that we’ve loved so much killed them,” she testified at a hearing a few weeks after the flooding. “My suggestion would be that instead of just sirens, we actually have sensors in the water that would then alert sirens to go off.”
She was the first parent at Ingram Elementary School, used as an emergency command center manned by volunteers right after the floods.
“No one was in charge, and I waited there for over 12 hours for news,” she told lawmakers.
Madelyn and her grandparents were three of at least 119 July 4 flood victims. An 8-year-old girl from the Alamo Heights community was also killed during the floods.
Besides the loss of life and effect on the river bed’s natural environment, the floods have led to increased funding for warning systems, which experts say isn’t enough; worsening mental health rates in the Hill Country and a months-long saga over whether to reopen the all-girls Camp Mystic, where 25 campers, two counselors and the camp’s executive director, died during the 2025 flood.
In Bexar County, officials accepted a $1 million state grant in April to begin installing flood-warning sirens in high-risk areas and moved to use local dollars to fund flood detection technology at vehicle crossings in December.
Jeffrey Baker carries the memory of Madelyn as a reminder to slow down, love another and “live our best lives.”
“There is not a moment that goes by when I don’t wish we could hear her voice or see her smile again. But today is not only about our loss. Today is about her life.”
