In 1900, a storm caused the Santa Catarina river (which separated the family house from Sara's school) to overflow and knock down the bridge that crossed it. Until the evening the children of the school could return from the other side of the river. The anguish of Don Isidoro for believing that he would lose his only daughter caused him to suffer a stroke days later. Doña Felipa decided to sell her business a papier-mâché factory and travel to Mexico City to intern her husband into the Sociedad de Beneficencia Española de México (Spanish Welfare Society of Mexico), but he died shortly after arriving. However her mother was contracted as the housekeeper.