When kindness of strangers is too much to bear

updated 9:32 a.m. ET Oct. 1, 2005

PINON HILLS, Calif. - Tears streamed down his face as Greyhound bus No. 1874 closed its doors and rolled off toward Dallas.

At 17, Jamie Ferrande dresses tough in slouching jeans, red sneakers and a baseball cap cocked to one side. But he jammed his hands into his pockets and refused to look up as his aunt and five cousins pressed their faces against the glass and waved goodbye.

Jamie saved his family from Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters but couldn’t help them adjust to the well-intentioned efforts of a California family trying to do the right thing. It was through the kindness of these and other strangers that Jamie, his aunt and her five children traveled 2,000 miles from a New Orleans rooftop to a 50-acre ranch near a ski resort in Southern California.

But what may seem like a Shangri-La became too much to bear for a displaced family who had lost everything.

Jamie’s younger cousins were coping — as children do. But his aunt, Troy Marcelin, quickly shifted from wary to downright miserable in California. She had grown up and raised her children in New Orleans, a city pulsing with activity, crowded with neighbors, packed with all things reassuringly familiar. There, she knew how to make her way. She spoke her mind.

In California, she was beholden to a family she’d only just met, relying on their kindness, their generosity. She felt her true self slipping away.

A series of fortunate events
An almost inconceivable series of events had brought them to safety here.

Jamie and his cousin Kenneth had ripped the door off an abandoned refrigerator and used it as a life raft, ferrying the younger children to the safety of the Best Western motel where Marcelin worked. A helicopter finally rescued them, and they landed at a shelter in San Antonio, Texas.

The odyssey continued when Mark Miller, a Californian who once ran a bed-and-breakfast in New Orleans and hired Jamie for odd jobs, got a desperate call from the teenager; Miller went to the Web for help and found an offer that Gene and Susan Knight, a wealthy couple, had posted on Craigslist.org.

They offered refuge to a family fleeing the storm. They had space in the house they had just sold in Arcadia, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, and they would take the guests with them when they moved to their ranch in Pinon Hills, near San Bernardino. Other strangers, linked by the Internet, pitched in to get the family onto a plane for the West Coast.

The Knights were building an addition to their house, providing a total of seven bedrooms and five bathrooms. It would be plenty of space to blend their two families, thought Susan, who planned to pay Jamie’s aunt to help take care of the kids and house.

Food, shelter — and stress
The Marcelins — who had never left Louisiana before — were coping with the shock of losing everything they owned. Thanks to the Knights, they were sheltered, fed and safe at last. But stresses soon began to show.

Nothing worked out quite as planned.

At 44, Troy Marcelin is thin and attractive with delicate features and wide-set eyes. But time and stress have taken their toll. She’s missing several teeth, and her face is lined and weary. Wearing cast-offs from shelters and generous strangers, she cried often during their first days in California but was beginning to relax.

Then the moving van arrived at the house in the Los Angeles suburbs. Another journey to make, and this one was overwhelming for her.

The new house, in a canyon near a tiny rural mountain town, sat in a harshly beautiful landscape of sagebrush, Joshua trees and scrub covering dry, rocky soil — opposite in every way from New Orleans.

It was miles to the nearest neighbor (Gene said he owns all the land visible from the house), and the silence scared Troy, as did snakes and coyotes, even the family dogs. She has never had a driver’s license. Her worldly possessions included $488 in food stamps, $1,500 from the Red Cross and $1,000 from a Knight family friend.

She felt completely dependent on the Knights.

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