California floodwater swept away their SUV Monday morning, 5-year-old Kyle Doan, now missing, encouraged his mother.
"Don't worry, Mommy," the boy said, his father, Brian Doan, recalled Wednesday.
"He wasn't quite processing what was going on," Doan told CNN. "But he was so calm talking to my wife while they were still in the car.
A powerful storm, among the latest to assault the West Coast, has turned streets into rivers and forced the closure of major roadways in California. Nearly 20 lives have been lost during a series of storms in recent weeks that a spokesman for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services on Wednesday called "one of the deadliest disasters in the history of our state."
Authorities have been searching for Kyle on and off since Monday. Over 100 National Guard members arrived at the scene to help search for the missing child on Wednesday, and more troops are arriving to help Thursday, the county's sheriff said.
Kyle's mother, a special education teacher at the same school in the San Luis Obispo County village of San Miguel where he attends kindergarten, managed to remove the boy from his car seat as floodwater overwhelmed their SUV on the way to their school.
"'Just yourself. Not your backpack. Leave it,'" she told him as they prepared to escape, according to Doan.
Kyle's mom held onto him, as water poured over the low point in the rural road and began propelling the vehicle.
Pieces of debris mixed with the mounting floodwater as Kyle's mom clutched the boy, along with a small purse with IDs and her phone.
"She tried to hold on to him and it was hard to stabilize things with the current," Doan said. "And they got separated."