Christine Benero should run the country. It’s just that simple.
The chief executive of the Mile High Chapter of the American Red Cross is so cool under pressure, even in the blazing afternoon sun, she refuses to sweat.
On Monday, just a week after hundreds of survivors of Hurricane Katrina began arriving in Colorado, the Red Cross assistance center in Aurora was a symphony of finely tuned volunteers providing everything from replacement eyeglasses and driver’s licenses to rock ‘n’ roll.
In only two weeks, the bare corner of a golf course has been transformed into a complex, open-air social-services center.
Janice Fields sat in the shade waiting for someone to take her to look at apartments. “I’ve been treated very well here,” she said.
When the hurricane hit, Fields was riding her bicycle through New Orleans, trying to find her cousin, a paraplegic. Before she could return home for her clothes, she was picked up by a rescue boat and shuttled to the convention center, then to the airport and finally to Denver.
“They told you where you were going when you got on the plane,” she said.
She arrived in Denver with nothing. The house where she’d lived since she was 6 is lost. The pie shop she owned is gone. “I need everything,” she said.
Fields already has several job offers, though, and is weighing her choices. At this point, she doesn’t think she’ll ever go back to New Orleans. “I’ve been through Betsy, Camille, termites and now this.”
The signs at the center provide a hint of the range of services required when a person arrives in a strange city without even a change of clothes. One advertises help finding child care; others offer checking accounts, veterans benefits, employment assistance and “Free, Free, Free Dave Matthews Band Tickets!”
Elyse Powell and Nick Sweeney came seeking help finding jobs. They evacuated from Ocean Springs, Miss., into the arms of friends from Colorado.
Sweeney went to school with Josh Reiner, who collected money to pay for airplane tickets to fly the couple here after the hurricane left them homeless. They’re living with Reiner and his fiancée, Lindsey Starkovich, at their home near Parker.
“We’ll take any kind of jobs,” said Powell. The two worked at a tackle shop and fuel dock in Ocean Springs. “We’re planning on staying here.”
For Anna Moran of New Orleans, her top priority was finding her cats.
“I’m thinking about staying,” she said, “if I get my babies.”
She tells everyone the same story. The key to her apartment is under the mat. Look for one cat that looks just like Sylvester. The other is a black cat with eyes that curve up.
They’re all she can think about. If she can find them, she knows she’ll be OK.
Benero said that in the past two weeks, about 8,000 Colorado volunteers have been trained to work with the evacuees. As each evacuee steps off the shuttle bus from the dormitory at Lowry, he’s met by a caseworker who makes sure he gets the help he needs.
“The best compliment we got was from one of the security guards,” said Benero. “He said he watched the people get off the bus with their heads hanging down, and when they leave here to get back on the bus, they’re holding their heads high.”
For the exhausted Red Cross staff, those words are like a multivitamin shot to the spirit.
Evacuees continue to find their way to Denver by car and by plane, eager to start new lives, to make new friends and become part of the community.
I walked through the tent past an amputee in a wheelchair, a couple completing a stack of forms for housing assistance, old people, young people – all bewildered, determined new Coloradans.
I overheard one caseworker reassuring a woman about the most common fear. “I’ve only been here two years,” she said. “I thought it would be cold here too. But it’s really nice in the wintertime, really.
“It snows just a little bit, and the sun shines and shines.
“You’re going to like it here,” she said.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
