Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Mercedes Toregano still remembers the brown suitcase she’d packed for what she’d expected to be a few days away.
As the storm barreled toward Louisiana in late August 2005, the longtime teacher and beautician had hastily stuffed her most cherished belongings inside that suitcase and fled with her adult son and extended family members. She thought she’d be gone only a few days and packed as such, but she soon learned that her life had abruptly changed forever.
When the storm hit on Monday morning, her house in Gentilly — just blocks from the 17th Street Canal levee that ultimately crumbled from the force of the floodwaters — took on more than 10 feet of water. Soon after, she realized that her teaching job at John McDonogh Senior High School was gone. The hair salon she’d just relocated to her house was destroyed. At age 55, she found herself displaced, without a home or livelihood.
“I lost all three — the job, the beauty salon, my home,” said Toregano, 75, who lives in Denver’s Clayton neighborhood. “I had to let go and let God. He chose Denver for me.”
A rush to leave
Toregano recalls the desperate rush to evacuate New Orleans. Her son was working at a hospital at the time, so she could not leave until his shift ended. They eventually joined in a caravan of four cars of family and friends headed west on Interstate 10. The drive to Houston, normally five hours, stretched nearly 19 hours.
Along the way, she worried about her sister, who had refused to evacuate with a handicapped child. Days later, Toregano saw them both on television — stranded on a bridge, trying to reach the Superdome, which had been designated as a relief shelter for thousands of residents who did not have the means to leave the city. Her sister eventually landed at the New Orleans Convention Center instead and bounced around to different shelters for three weeks until the government relief agency FEMA issued them a mobile home.
Toregano and her family could barely process their losses before they were forced to evacuate Houston, weeks later, when Hurricane Rita threatened the Texas coast. Toregano had received offers to live with friends and family across the country, but she eventually accepted the invitation of her longtime best friend, Willie Singleton, who flew to Houston and drove her to his home in Denver’s Clayton neighborhood, where they still live today.
Life after loss
The depth of the disaster finally hit home once her son shared pictures of her furniture floating out of her house. Her homeowner’s insurance claims were denied because flood damage wasn’t covered. FEMA assistance, which included a modest amount of money for food and essentials, stretched only so far.
“It was beyond me,” she said. “I’m a multitasker, but this was too much … Too much to put together.”
Though grateful for a place to stay, she said adjusting to life in Colorado was tough. The high altitude aggravated her respiratory illness, sarcoidosis. And the culture was hard to adjust to, compared to her way of life in the South, often packed with social events and long evenings socializing with friends perched on her front porch.
“I didn’t know my neighbors here, and I still don’t know many of them,” she said. “Back home, you knew everybody up and down the block.”
Yet she found stability and healing in Denver. In 2011, she received a kidney transplant at a local hospital. And she found a social outlet — and more importantly, a sense of community — singing in several local choirs, including at her home church, New Hope Baptist. All the while, Singleton has provided support.
“When you are able to move somewhere and have somebody to help you through everything, it’s a blessing,” she said of her longtime buddy. “I'm not just talking about just financially; emotionally, spiritually and socially. So I do have all of the benefits that anybody could ask for at my age and at this time.”
New Orleans today
On a recent trip back home, Toregano said she was disheartened to see empty slabs where houses once stood, waterlines still etched into walls. Uptown and popular tourist corridors like Canal Street and Bourbon Street looked vibrant, she noted, but many of the residential neighborhoods where she and many of her family members once lived haven’t fared as well.
“It looked like some of what it looked like 20 years ago,” she said. “That was sad.”
She has accepted that she likely will never return to her beloved New Orleans, as her health is too fragile and she never had the resources to renovate her damaged house. The love for her hometown, however, never fades.
“My home is New Orleans,” she said. “But this is my Denver home. I tell people I have two homes.”
When she sees news reports of wildfires in Colorado or other disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes battering other states, Toregano said she feels a deep connection.
“I pray harder for anybody going through what we went through in Katrina,” she said. “When I see people crying over losing things, I just want to tell them: but you’ve got your life. That’s the most important thing.”
Every so often, Toregano said she pulls out that old brown suitcase filled with some of the few mementos she managed to grab while fleeing the wrath of Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago, including a cherished prayer book gifted to her by her late mother in 1982.
“Those are my memories,” she said. “And they’re what keep me grateful for what I still have.”
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