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NAPLES — Pounding on the front door wakes them. It’s the middle of the night.

One foot out of bed and he feels that the floor is damp. Two feet out and the water rushes over his toes, rising fast. Rigoberto and Velia Guerrero wake their four children and they pack, quickly. Frantic.

Clothes. Blankets. Toothbrushes. Three bags for six people.

They leave their home of 12 years behind, not knowing that they’ll never live there again.

The Guerrero family’s story was a common one in the American Red Cross shelter where they lived for nearly a month. Everybody in that Bonita Springs mobile home park left things behind when Tropical Storm Fay forced them out. Everybody lost everything.

But for this family, one loss in particular has been hard to accept. Talking about it still brings tears to their eyes.

They had to leave behind their dog, Sam.

■ ■ ■

He chose them.

It was Christmastime, and Velia Guerrero and her husband packed their four kids into the SUV and drove across Alligator Alley to celebrate with family in Homestead. A family member’s dog had just given birth, and when they saw one of the puppies, Velia fell in love.

She picked him up, a tiny bundle of bones and fur with two pointy ears. He sneezed on her hands, she laughed, and then he nuzzled into her arms and licked her hands. From that day on, he was a part of the family.

When Velia, 43, remembers that moment, she hugs her arms into her chest and smiles, her dark brown eyes shining with unshed tears.

“He was a tiny baby,” she says, in Spanish, raising her hands and holding them about eight inches apart.

Weeks after the flood, Velia sits in the lobby of the Red Cross shelter at Estero Community Park. She’s wearing a blue and white polka-dotted T-shirt and jean shorts, and her long hair is dark brown, almost black. Around her slender wrist, she wears a bright yellow identification bracelet, like everyone living at the shelter.

All around, shelter volunteers and other displaced residents bustle about. Kids arrive from school, parents leave to do laundry, visitors sign in to see family. It’s a building the size of a supermarket and the big central room, a three-basketball-court gym, has been turned into a giant dorm. Hundreds of cots are lined up row by row, and more than 500 people sleep there.

But right now, Velia tunes out the noise around her. She and her daughter SanJuanita, 18, talk about their dog, their faces lighting up. SanJuanita, who sits beside her mom on the couch, speaks in English and her mother chimes in Spanish, filling in parts of the story.

They brought the puppy home to their trailer in Manna Christian Village RV park nearly two years ago, and he fit right in with the family. SanJuanita and her sisters Maria, 13, and Eloisa, 10, named him Sam after Sam Waterston, who plays a district attorney on the TV show “Law & Order.”

“He was just like that character,” SanJuanita says. “Strict but friendly. A guardian.”

Velia nods in agreement. Her husband travels to Miami during the week for work, and the dog helped her and the children feel safe.

“Before my husband left, he would say to Sam, ‘Take good care of them,’ and Sam understood,” Velia says. “At night he stayed in the lanai outside our front door. He was a good guardian.”

■ ■ ■

When Fay drenched Southwest Florida in mid-August, the Guerreros packed bags and blankets, left food outside for Sam and fled to a shelter. Just two nights later, they were back home again. Everything seemed fine. The storm felled a few trees in the trailer park, but nothing more.

It rained that week, but still, there were just a few puddles. On the night of Friday, Aug. 22, they went to sleep and the ground was nothing more than moist.

But when their neighbor woke them at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, the water was rising rapidly. They packed and left in 15 minutes, but didn’t forget to fill Sam’s food dish.

“It was so hard to leave him that night,” says SanJuanita. “We left him in the lanai, but we didn’t lock the door, so he could get out.”

“We thought we were going to be home in a few days,” Velia says, her voice faltering a little.

They didn’t see Sam for weeks, and then, only to say goodbye.

■ ■ ■

Velia carries him with her always.

She pulls her wallet out of her yellow purse, opens it and takes out a small piece of paper. It’s a computer-printed image of Sam, taken by Lee County Animal Services to publish with the dog’s adoption notices. It was this photo that brought them together one last time, she says.

After the residents fled Manna Christian, animal shelter officers visited the park to pick up pets who had been left behind. They rescued about 80 from the tepid, tainted waters that filled the community.

Sam was scared. He swam away, paddling under the partially-submerged trailers to get away, so officers left food for him on any dry surface they could find. Each day for five days, they tried to get him to come closer. He was one of the hardest animals to catch.

When a shelter investigator finally caught him, he barked and pulled at the leash, scared still. But when she got him in the back of a truck, he laid his head in her lap, took a deep breath and calmed down. His tail wagged and he licked her hands.

They took a photo of him and put him up for adoption. His picture went in local newspapers, online, and was posted at the Red Cross shelter.

When Velia saw her dog’s picture taped to the wall, she cried. She and two of her children went to visit him at the Fort Myers animal shelter, but she knew they couldn’t take him home. There was no home to take him to.

It broke her heart.

■ ■ ■

Barking fills the room when you open the door, and your nose knows that there are dozens of dogs living here. As you walk down the aisles, they yip and follow you with their eyes, asking to be petted. Taken out for a walk. Loved.

Rows of pens divide the big open space, and nearly 50 of them hold dogs that are up for adoption. This is where Sam waits — but his name isn’t Sam anymore. For now, they call him Moses, but who knows, maybe his new owners will give him a different name.

Walk over to his 5-foot-by-4-foot enclosure, and it’s like flipping a switch. The 35-pound dog bounces behind the door, pointy ears perked and crescent-shaped tail wagging.

He wants to play.

“Hello sweetie,” says Ria Brown, the shelter’s public information officer. She reaches her hand over the chain-link door and scratches him behind his head. Brown grabs a blue leash, puts it around his neck and opens the door.

Sam circles her legs and wraps them together with the leash. Then, as she directs him toward the door, he puts his black nose to the ground, snuffling and sniffing a trail of scents.

His fur is short and sleek, black everywhere except for white on his feet, the tip of his tail and a tiny spot of fur that shines on the back of his neck. He’s two years old, and nobody’s really sure what type of dog he is, Brown says. Maybe part Labrador retriever? But he’s smaller than a lab, so definitely part something else.

“He’s whatever you want him to be,” she says, smiling. “And he’s a great family dog. He’s been around kids all his life and he’ll make a great friend for somebody.”

Everyone at the shelter knows the dog’s story. How he, unlike many of the animals rescued from Manna Christian, survived the flood healthy and strong. They remember how happy he was when his family came to visit, and how hard it was for Velia to sign the papers to give him up.

“I commend her for her decision,” says Cheryl Mee, the administrative assistant who helped Velia put Sam up for adoption. “It’s obvious that he was a member of their family, but they just weren’t able to care for him. And she recognized that.”

■ ■ ■

It’s 5 p.m. and Velia’s son Rigoberto, 4, answers the door of the family’s new apartment. He’s a ball of little boy energy and he runs from room to room like an excited puppy, showing off their new home.

“This is the bathroom for me and my parents,” he says, bouncing over to the tub and touching the new, blue shower curtain. Then, he bounds through the bedroom where he and his parents sleep, through the living room and into the bedroom his three sisters share. “This is the girls’ room, and here we have a door,” he says as he opens it, revealing a walk-in closet.

Inside the closet, only one hanger has clothing on it: a bell-skirted, pink dress that SanJuanita wore for her quinceañera. The family went back to the trailer last weekend with FEMA officials and her father salvaged family photos, a computer and her dress, which were all safe in plastic. Everything else stayed behind.

It’s been about a month since the flood, and they’ve just moved into this new apartment in North Naples off Old 41 Road. Velia is happy. She has a dishwasher for the first time, a garbage disposal and a dryer.

She’ll miss the tight-knit community of Manna Christian, she says. But some families from the RV park have moved into the same apartments, and she’s already making friends with neighbors.

While the kids play in the near-empty rooms, Velia pours rice into a pot and turns on the stove. It’s the first night she’s made dinner in their new home, and she’s unwrapping pots and pans and utensils as she goes. A radio plays Mexican norteña music quietly in the background, and she hums along, moving to the bouncy, accordion-driven upbeats.

As Velia minds the food on the stove, she and SanJuanita make verbal lists of everything they need: A rolling pin to make tortillas, magnets to put the kids’ bus schedules on the fridge and a stool so Velia, who is about 5 feet, can reach the high cabinets.

And those are just the little things. They’re going to get aid from FEMA, but it hasn’t come yet.

“We’re going to start over again,” Velia says, pausing in her stirring. “We’re tranquil here, and happy. ... But we’re still sad about leaving Sam.”

The apartment requires a pet deposit, and they’d have to buy food for him, care for him, she says. It’s just too much. They don’t have beds. They have to buy a couch, a table and chairs, pay for rent and electricity. How could they care for a dog?

The people at Lee County Animal Services agree. Even though the family has a home now, it would be too much for them to take on the responsibility of a dog again, they say. Adoption was the best choice for Sam.

But that doesn’t make it any easier for the Guerreros to forget him.

“If Sam were here right now, he’d probably be running around playing with him,” SanJuanita says, pointing to her 4-year-old brother, who is jumping around in the empty living room. “He always loved to play.”

They know that the shelter is looking for a good family for Sam. The shelter promised that he won’t be put to sleep. But in their hearts, it hurts to think of him in a new home with new owners and a new name. He’s their Sam.

But, like them, he’s starting a new life.