New Orleans Voices: Denise and Richard

Denise and Richard are a young couple who lived in the Seventh Ward, right downtown in New Orleans. They stayed in their raised house during the hurricane and barbecued outside with their neighbors for a week, until the city became too contaminated to stay.

They were evacuated to Austin, where they live now in a sparsely furnished apartment. Having left New Orleans without his wallet, Richard is still struggling with the paperwork and red tape to get a new Social Security card, driver's license and birth certificate so that he can work. Denise is working at Goodwill and trying to keep her spirits up while struggling with nightmares and depression. Her two children are living in other states with relatives.

Richard:

If I get my identification, can't nothing stop me. Because in the city, I wasn't receiving no benefits. I wasn't receiving no financial help. All I needed to do was find a restaurant. I started as a dishwasher and worked up. I'm a monster in the kitchen. I can cook, I can clean, that's what I do.

So I don't receive any free benefits. I'm not worried about a FEMA check. I'm not worried about no government assistance. Just give me an ID! Let these people hire me, and I'm straight from that point on. I can work. I've been doing it since 13, that's all I know how to do is work, you know. That's the only thing.

It's moving slowly but surely. Once I get all my personal information back, get me a job, I be straight. From that point on, I be smiling. I work, that's what I need to do.

That's mainly the story of every person in New Orleans right now: They basically lost everything. And the things they didn't lose, the people who stayed took it from them. It's like only the strong survive. It's a matter of survival. I mean, I can't blame anybody who stayed during that tragedy, for going into anybody's house taking anything they needed to sell or use or eat or anything, because honestly, I would have did it.

I would have did it, and I'd do it again. As many times as I needed to do it to survive. So I can't blame anyone who went in my house -- I'm upset, trust me, that's the reason I didn't want to leave.

I'm 24, just started working, and I worked for everything I wanted, and I got it. I felt like it was more than just material things to me because it was my first time being able to do this on my own. Everything in that house I accomplished on my own, so don't tell me it is of no value. How is it of no value? I went out there and I busted my ass getting it! I worked my butt to get it. I went to work sick to get this, so don't tell me that this TV or this entertainment center has no value, because it is something materialistic and I could get it again. I could get it again, but I can't get it like I got it the first time. Because I worked, and I proved the point to myself.

And you know, it's all gone. And it's not gone because a flood took it or a hurricane took it. It's gone because people who was down there and the people who lost stuff like I lost stuff had to go in there and get it. They had to do what they had to do. So it's just you lost everything, because the people who went in there took my stuff. Obviously, they took my stuff because they lost everything.

So I mean, it's just from one person to another: Everybody from down there have something in common, mainly we went through a tragic thing. Everything I didn't experience that another person experienced, it kind of rubbed off on me because the things they lost, they took from me to get back. So it's kind of like they made their problem my problem. And my problem was somebody else's problem, because I went in somebody's stuff to get what I needed when I was down there. So that's the main reason I can't blame nobody for doing what they did: because it's a continuous story.