Joplin, Missouri (CNN) -- Like almost each high school senior who has donned a hat and robe, Scott Lauridsen was excited.
Finally, behind four years at Joplin High School, it was period to go. Graduate. Celebrate. Step up to the afterward stage of his youth life.
"I was excited -- prepared to start asset current and migrate onto campus and experience life and then entire this happened," said Lauridsen, 18, one day after one of the deadliest American twisters above log ripped via his hometown of Joplin, Missouri.
And now?
"Now I'm just worried about helping out with the community and getting things back together," he said.
A recent graduate's joy: Another casualty of Sunday's terrible hurricane.
Lauridsen was one of approximately 450 seniors to receive a diploma from Joplin High School this year. Their graduation etiquette at a local campus wrapped up just for the storm began to coil in.
Students flowed out of the gymnasium and onto one open lawn as pride parents, family and friends snapped pictures -- smiling graduates against a backdrop of darkening skies. A light rain began to fall and people rushed to their cars.
Aaron Frost, another graduate, left with his girlfriend. They were headed to a cafeteria to meet his family when Frost, 18, got a shriek from his mother.
"She pretty many claimed namely we dragged over," he said. "I would have drove right into the storm. My mother pretty many saved me there."
Frost and his girlfriend ducked into a Fast Trip expedience store and took cover, forward with about 18 other people, inside a walk-in cooler.
"You can't actually do anything," he said. "We just bent over and covered our heads."
A piece of glass struck Frost's hand merely otherwise he is fine. The store and his automobile were not as fortunate.
Later, Frost went by his antique school, where the roof was ripped off and debris was scattered across the lawn.
Kerry Sachetta, principal at Joplin High School, narrated the damage as "hideous."
"I walked approximately as much as I could to penetrate it and it just looks favor it's been bombarded from the appearance in," he said.
Joplin's public school district has canceled classes as the recess of the annual.
"To see my high school flattened is particularly hard," said Frost. "It's indescribable."
His concern is made worse by the uncertainty of not understanding what occurred to some human from his community. Phone service in the area is spotty and friends have struggled to interlock.
Lauridsen said Will Norton, variant Joplin graduate and a friend of his, namely lacking. Norton and his dad were driving home while the storm kick. A Facebook page has been set up to help situate him.
"My dad said ... his seat belt snapped and he was expelled through the sunroof," said Sara Norton, Will's sister.
Their father is in settled condition, she said, but the family is still trying to pin down exactly where Will might be.
"It just makes me melancholy to know so many of my classmates have lost their homes and some of them are still missing," said Taylor Costley, 18, another 2011 graduate of Joplin High School.
She rode out the storm at home with her father, brother and grandparents, alarming for her mom who was briefly -- but terrifyingly-- out of contact.
"Graduation's assumed to be a joyous cause, but we can't really feel that merry about it," Costly said. "At the same time, I'm so thankful I'm OKAY and my family's OKAY."
CNN's Dana Ford contributed to this report.
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