We met Denise Herbert, a hurricane evacuee, last month in Atlanta. She told us that being displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina was the least of her problems, because her mother, Ethel Herbert, was still missing.
I was interviewing Denise at a program for hurricane victims, an event attended by Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. In the middle of my interview, Denise both shocked and touched us by screaming uncontrollably that her elderly mother had been missing since two days after the hurricane and nobody in government had helped her.
The governor met with Denise and pledged help, but it was one of our viewers, David Lipin from California, who recognized a picture of Ethel Herbert from our story and called us. Lipin was part of a medical team that treated Ethel at the Superdome. He said she was in grave condition when she was put on an emergency helicopter. We then contacted officials at the morgue, and sadly, last week, they proclaimed that one of their unidentified bodies was that of Ethel Herbert.
So today, we are in New Orleans with Denise and other family members as they prepare for the funeral service tomorrow of the matriarch of their family. Denise is grief-stricken and heartbroken as she comes back to New Orleans for only the second time since Katrina. But she thanks God that her mother is no longer suffering and that she finally has a body to bury.
