Linda Nelson buried her head on the shoulder of her daughter, Tania Forrest, and wept tears of relief Wednesday.
“I thought I was going to float out of there,” Nelson cried as the women embraced at Denver International Airport. “I’m so happy to see you.”
Nelson spent two horrific days trapped in the attic of her New Orleans home.
Forrest, 34, of Oklahoma City, had talked with her mother several times by cellphone as Hurricane Katrina pounded. They spoke again after the storm moved on and floodwaters poured in.
But as a day went by and then another, the phone connections were harder to make and Forrest felt helpless knowing her mother was trapped.
Forrest made multiple calls for help, including to the American Red Cross, where she wound up with a volunteer in Denver, Elbert Mathews, who buoyed her hopes that her 55-year-old mother would somehow be rescued.
But it didn’t look good in New Orleans.
One side of Nelson’s home had been torn away by winds. The other side collapsed after flooding and was floating away. Only the middle remained.
Nelson, who was stranded with two friends, had taken a can of Vienna sausage, potato chips, cookies and one soda up into the attic.
Mathews reached Nelson several times on her cellphone, which was working because it was a Texas number.
“After talking to the daughter and then talking to the mother, it became a real personal thing,” Mathews said Wednesday at the airport after watching the tearful reunion.
Their final conversation was two days after the storm.
Nelson had just fallen through the attic into what was left of her water-filled home.
“Don’t let me drown in my own house,” she pleaded to Mathews.
The desperate women were out of food and drink. They made a plan to get out by noon that day, even if it meant going on their own.
Meanwhile, in Denver, Mathews called the Louisiana State Police and passed along word of Nelson’s dire situation.
But as the women were ready to float off on a refrigerator door, a private boat with civilian volunteers found them.
The two other women went to shelters.
Nelson was dropped off on a highway in New Orleans, then taken to Houston.
It took several days, but Frontier Airlines arranged for mom, daughter and Mathews to celebrate survival in Denver on Wednesday.
The mother and daughter were going on to Oklahoma City, where Nelson, a New Orleans native and lifelong resident, will live with Forrest.
“I’m looking forward to having her with me,” Forrest said. “I don’t know what I would do without my mom.”
Will Nelson return to New Orleans to live?
She shook her head from side to side.
“Never.”
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson can be reached at 303-820-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com.
