Flood destroys restaurant owner's Brewers memorabilia collection

WEST ALLIS, Wis. (CBS 58) -- Along a stretch of S. 81st St. near W. Lincoln Ave., trucks for contractors of all kinds lined up next to just about every house. Another day on the long road to recovery brought more dispiriting discoveries for people.

One of the homes on this block belongs to Andy Radjenovich, who with his wife, Melanie, owns the Jackson Grill supper club on Milwaukee's south side. On Tuesday afternoon, workers carried out tub after tub of treasured belongings from a massive hole in their house's foundation.

Radjenovich said the couple got home from the restaurant around 11 p.m. Saturday night. It was raining heavily, but everything seemed fine. Then, water started pooling in the street, then in the front yard, then it began to pool in the basement.

"All of a sudden, we started getting water in the basement, and in a matter of five minutes, the basement wall collapsed," he recalled.

The couple went to the house's second floor as water filled the basement and began to rise on the main floor. Radjenovich said all they could do was watch as the nearby Honey Creek turned their block into raging rapids.

"Chaos. It looked like a river out here, strong currents," he said. "Cars floating down the street, logs, branches and neighbors getting rescued from dump trucks."

Lost in the flood were kinds of sports memorabilia. Radjenovich showed one tub of more than 50 bobbleheads caked in mud and dried sewer water. The same applied to his collection of autographed bats signed by past baseball stars such as Eddie Matthews and Jose Canseco. 

While Radjenovich was upset about the state of his souvenirs, he was more worried about the structural integrity of his home.

"Extremely concerned," he said. "I've never even thought anything like this would happen in my wildest dreams."

On that front, there was one bit of good news. Feliciano Martinez, owner of Chano's Maintenance, was overseeing the crew working at the house Tuesday.

Martinez said he was optimistic the foundation could be repaired, but he added for this house, and so many others, it's truly a race against time.

"It's chaos," Martinez said. "All these houses need to be cleaned up as soon as possible so they can be saved."

From house to house, Martinez said he's met one family after another dealing with all kinds of stress. Many are now moving into a stage where they're fighting their insurance companies.

"Right now, you hear stories of everybody around this neighborhood that insurance doesn't wanna cover [their damage], things like that," he said. "They're devastated."

Radjenovich is among those clashing with their insurer. He said the company has yet to send out an adjuster to examine the damage, but it still offered $5,000 to cover everything.

"They offered me some ridiculous figure," he said. "And it's, 'You know what? Go pound sand.' We're not gonna take that figure."

A happy reunion

On the city's northwest side, there was another silver lining. The Lincoln Creek was once again a relatively small stream as it ran along N. 63rd St. near W. Villard Ave.

Two days earlier, it rose to levels high enough to completely fill basements one block over on 62nd Street. One of those basements is where Amie Stocks kept just about all of her belongings.

"I have no bed, I have no clothes," Stocks said. "I have nothing no more because of that."

The basement is also where she slept, she explained, because her husband snores too loud. Early Sunday morning, she escaped the basement as it filled with water.

However, her cat, Bubbles, ran toward the basement seeking out its usual safe space. Stocks said as the water rose, she tried to go back downstairs after the pet.

"She was crying and crying and crying, and I'm trying to get out around the house," Stocks recalled. "My husband said, 'No, you're not doing it. You're gonna die.' I said, 'No. I want my cat.' She needed it."

Somehow, though, the cat found a hole behind the tub for the washer, and Stocks said it got into the walls and climbed up. Bubbles made to through another hole and into a linen closet upstairs.

Stocks was able to hold her two cats and two dogs, and that was a relief. While that provided a bit of normalcy Tuesday, she and her husband are still feeling the same long-term stress as so many other people in and around Milwaukee.

"Everything's ruined, so we don't know [our future] yet," she said. "The insurance doesn't pay for it. Because of water, they won't pay for that."