What do you do if your evening flight is canceled but you really need to be somewhere in the morning and there are no other flights?
In the case of 13 strangers in Orlando, Florida, on Sunday night, you rent a minivan, form a spontaneous group of people, and go on a “crazy” road trip, taking hundreds of thousands of TikTok viewers with you.
Nobody knows for sure how it happened.
Michelle says that it was her idea but that everyone else made it happen. Carlos thinks Amy thought of it, but he put the credit card down. Laura, who is with Carlos, says that she would never do something like this on her own. Laura’s daughter, Mikayla, was in disbelief.
When they first told me I looked at them like they were crazy. I’m like, ‘You want to get into this big van with a bunch of random strangers?
said Mikayla.
Sunday night at Florida’s Orlando International Airport when it happened. Frontier Airlines had to cancel an evening flight to Knoxville, Tennessee. People who were stuck at the airport were looking for other flights on their phones and waiting in line to talk to the busy airport staff.
Michelle Miller, also known as @thefarmbabe, is an influencer. On Tuesday, she was going to talk at a conference in Knoxville. Mikayla Puckering, who was 17, was going on a tour of the University of Tennessee with her parents, Carlos Cordero and Laura Puckering. One person was going to court for a custody case. A friend was being helped by someone else to move to Mexico. Some people only wanted to go home.
People came from all over the US and even from other countries. They all had the same problem: their flight was canceled, and they needed to get somewhere that night.
When the idea to rent a van and drive to Knoxville overnight came up, Carlos and Laura said no. It seemed like a lot of work.
But when they saw how upset their daughter Mikayla was about missing the tour of her dream college, they changed their minds.
She had tears in her eyes,
said Laura.
Amy, another passenger, had been talking about hiring the van. So, they went up to her.
I said, ‘I’m down,’
Carlos recalled.
She was like, ‘If you’re down, I’m in.’ Then some other lady came in and said, ‘If you guys are in, I’m in.’ And then it just manifested into 10-15 people.
Carlos says that after that, they didn’t think twice about what to do.
We got a really good vibe, because these are regular normal wholesome people trying to get home and having things that they need to take care of.
The group of people who were stuck went downstairs to the place where you can rent cars. Carlos saw that there were no lines at Hertz, so he went there. He was offered a van that could have up to 15 people.
So we rented it. And the rest is kind of history,
he said.
An unexpected experience.
As the group waited for the van, Alanah Story, a college graduate in her 20s who works in media, started making videos for her TikTok.
Alanah asked the stranded passengers on the video to introduce themselves and talk about how they got stuck and why they were renting a van with a bunch of strangers to drive across the country.
If I thought that this was crazy, I knew other people might think it’s crazy also,”
Alanah tells a source.
And so I just figured, this is a very unique bunch of people, we’re all very different. So I don’t know, maybe other people would want to see it too, because things like this just don’t happen on the regular.
In the end, 13 passengers who had been left behind joined the unplanned road trip.
Thirteen of us plus luggage, it fit perfectly,
says Michelle.
And we all just climbed aboard, and we’re on our way.
The group got on the road around 9:30 at night. They gave themselves numbers from one to thirteen so that when they stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom, they could be sure that everyone was back together again.
Carlos offered to drive for a while.
We made a plan: I was supposed to drive one or two or three hours. And then Amy was supposed to take it over — number five — and then I believe Michelle — number 13 — she volunteered as well,
said Carlos.
In the end, Carlos did most of the driving. He was fueled by what he calls “the strongest cappuccino” from Dunkin’ Donuts. Another passenger, Seth, kept Carlos awake and alert for the first hour or so by telling stories about his job as a minister. Amy kept an eye on him the whole way and took over for about an hour when Carlos needed to take a nap.
Some of the people in the back talked about their lives, jobs, and families. Some of the other travelers tried to sleep. But something was going on online: Alanah’s TikTok was getting more and more views. People had a lot to say about the group of strangers who had decided to drive across the country together. They said that it was like a Hallmark movie. The people who use TikTok were eager for an update.
We were just reading the comments from people and we were laughing and we didn’t expect this. It was like one million views after a few hours,
says Laura.
We were like, ‘What is going on?’
Three hours into the trip, when they stopped at a gas station, Alanah filmed an update. This time, the group went with the idea that “this could be a movie.”
One passenger, Q, joked that he would “die first” because he was the only Black person in the group. This was a reference to horror movie tropes. One of the passengers was a Mexican farmer named Adolf Froese, who spoke only Spanish. He and his friend Johan had been called “definitely Russian spies” by the commentators.
Michelle said she was only there for the snacks, and Alanah’s mother, Renee, made a joke about stopping at the liquor store. People started to watch the video. It seemed like everyone in the van had something in common with someone else. Everyone cared about where they were going.
We all were so different. And I think a big part of why people like it so much is because you could literally see our differences in real time,
says Alanah.
We were like a big dysfunctional family,
said Michelle.
It was fun.
From strangers to friends.
The group arrived at Knoxville several hours later, tired but happy.
Everybody was so awesome. It almost went too perfect,
says Carlos.
There was no traffic. Everyone got along, everyone pitched in. It was just seamless.
It took collective effort. Everybody really had their own thing going on. But everybody cared about one another’s ventures and responsibilities.
Michelle’s insistence on multiple bathroom breaks was the only problem, which Alanah’s mom Renee made fun of in Alanah’s last TikTok.
That was all in good fun,
says Alanah.
As soon as they got to Knoxville, everyone went their own way.
Alanah and Renee went back to their homes. Michelle found out she was at the same conference as Johan and Adolf, who were not spies. And Mikayla, Carlos, and Laura got to the University of Tennessee just in time. People at the college knew about what happened because they had read about it online and heard about it from others. The college bought lunch for the family for free.
Even after a few days, the group is still trying to figure out what happened. Laura says that she gets teary-eyed every time she thinks about how the 13 strangers got to know each other.
She does warn that it’s important to trust your gut and be careful in this kind of situation.
“I don’t want to make people think they can just get in a car with strangers,”
she says, adding that she felt safer because she was with Carlos and he was driving.
But she says the experience has given her hope.
I take away the fact that there are some really good people in this world. We were all different cultures, we were different backgrounds. It couldn’t have gotten more perfect. So I don’t have any regrets. No regrets whatsoever.
Alanah repeats what she says.
I feel like this situation for me specifically kind of restored my trust and humanity a little bit,
Alanah says.
There’s definitely hope for people — people, they can be good. And also, if you get the opportunity to go on a crazy adventure, you should take it, because you never know what’s gonna come out of it.
Carlos says that the experience shows how important it is to try to “roll with the punches” as much as possible, especially when traveling, and to have a positive attitude about the hard and unexpected things that will happen from time to time.
Things happen that none of us want or can control,
he says.
Don’t let the small stuff affect you. And you make the best of it.
After being in the van for so long, the group went from being strangers to becoming friends. On Thursday, Alanah will go to karaoke with Q. Michelle and Laura want to hang out together in Orlando the next time they go there. Amy invited the 13 people who were stuck to come to her house in Mexico.
Throughout the ride, I kept on saying, everything happens for a reason,
says Mikayla.
If we would have went on that plane, none of this would have happened, we wouldn’t have met these people.
