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The world knew beforeBrittany Feliciano.

Feliciano was upstairs in her Myrtle Beach home.Like so many others watching for Hurricane Dorians arrival Sept. 5,all she had to do that day was wait and worry.

So, she moldedPlay-Doh forher newborn.

She watchedhim.The Weather Channel. Her Facebook feed.

Thenafriend from Charleston messaged Feliciano with a question, and the answer to it would change the course of Feliciano's day, week and coming months.

There's a red Jeep Cherokee on the beach, the messageread. Could it be hers?

By thatpoint, the sensational image of a Jeep stranded in the waves already belonged tosocial media stand-ups.

In the coming hours, it would launch a series of #DorianJeep memes, with the abandoned SUV photoshopped into sea scenes from"Castaway," "Titanic" and "The Little Mermaid." It made headlines in The New York Times and CNN. The Twitter feeds of the likes of Good Morning America's Ginger Zee.

That all added up to anofficial, searchable nickname Myrtle Beach Jeep.

Related: A Jeep got stuck on Myrtle Beach before Hurricane Dorian. Then the internet got ahold of it.

More: Someone in Myrtle Beach drove a Jeep into the ocean before the storm. Hurricane Dorian didn't want it.

The not-yet-famous also got in on the gag. Someone shot video of a man appearing to meditate on the roof of the 2014 vehicle with waves crashing around him. Another clip featured a different man playing "Amazing Grace" and "Taps" on the bagpipes during low tide.

Musician Stan James Gregory said he wanted to see the internet-famous Jeep in Myrtle Beach on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. His wife, Paula, got a photo for his website.(Photo: KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK)

Thousands tuned into#JeepWatch2019, a live feed set up by a local TV station.

It became a sort of mascot for Hurricane Dorian'sU.S. landfall. Myrtle Beach Jeepwas a distraction from the destruction and comic relief from the harrowingforecasts that gripped coastal communities for days in September.

Dorian was the second-most-powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic. In its slow march toward the U.S., it ravaged the Bahamas for days,killing at least 61 people and flattening miles ofneighborhoods.

Now, at the close of adecade defined by social media sensations, Myrtle BeachJeep joined the ranks of other viral stars of the recent past: apregnant giraffe named April, a watermelon squeezed by rubber bands, thatWyoming intersection traffic camera.

Back on Sept. 5, the world wide web watched and waited as the waves rose and fell. Hurricane Dorian came and left, leaving just snapped leaves and toppled trashcans on Ocean Boulevard. By the next morning, the skies were clear, and the Myrtle Beach Police Department towed the Myrtle Beach Jeepaway.

The Internet moved on.Feliciano did not.

It was her Jeep, and she wanted this moment to mean something more.

About five minutes afterFeliciano read her friend's message, she heard a knock on the door.

It was a police officer. An officer on the doorstep was all she and her husband needed to see to know the Jeep going viral used to be parked at their house.

Felicianos husband's cousin was driving the Jeep.

Feliciano has four kids, so she opted for the familyminivan. The cousin needed a car, and they had one they weren't using. And the Felicianosare the kind of people who offer solutions to others people's problems.

The cousin isexactly the type of person who would end up driving toward the beach in a hurricane, Feliciano said. "He is literally the most adventurous."

He's that cousin.

He was trying to grab some video of the ocean before the storm hit and the sun rose, Feliciano said. When he turned around to head back, he hit a drainage wall. The carcouldn't move. But he could. So, he left to find help.

But he was in an evacuation zone. Businesses were closed. Services were limited.

When he returned, the bloated ocean was shaking andshiftingthe car weighing atleast 3,000 pounds as if it was agitated with the thing.

It was too late. The cousinleft without the car, and he didn't call the Felicianos to tell them what had just happened.

No charges were filed against the driver, according to the Myrtle Beach Police Department. It is illegal to drive on the beach.

Feliciano is from Bladen County, near Wilmington, North Carolina. After Hurricane Florence flooded the region in 2018, she drove her minivan, packed with donations, back home. She's seen people she cares so much aboutlose so much to a natural disaster.

The day the Jeep left the beach, she and her husband, Nick, launched a GoFundMe aiming to pivot thespotlight toward the humanitarian crisis in the Bahamas. It raised a couple thousand forUNICEF USA to help with the disaster relief.The goal was $100,000.

"Anything is better than nothing," Feliciano said.

They earned another $50 from a celebrity appearance at the AutoFair at Charlotte Motorspeedway in October.

The couple, however, didn't give up on their belief that their loss couldhelp others who lost so much more.

Their insurance company totaled the Jeep, but the couple got a year grace period to use the car for charity drivesbefore it heads to its final destination, the salvage yard.

For the holiday season, the couple launched a Fill the Jeep event. They are seekingnon-perishable food items to donate to South Strand Helping Hand, a social services organization in Surfside Beach.

The Jeep is now back at theFeliciano house. They keep it cloaked in a cover.

In early December, the car looked a bit different than it did in those viral beach images. The Jeep was part of a float in a Christmas Parade in North Myrtle Beach, cast as a 2019 version of the Grinchs sled. It was like the Jeep wasphotoshopped into a scene from the animated classic.

A string of Christmas and silver tinsel garland lined the sides. The roof carried a redsack stuffed with the Grinch's loot.

Stacked presents concealed the damage on the front.

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Read more from the original source:

The internet moved on from her red Jeep's viral Hurricane Dorian moment. She didn't. - Greenville News