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Frail at 75, she survived Katrina's worst

A woman who was trapped in a nursing home as floodwaters rose is reunited with her family in Florida.

MOUNT DORA - From her bed in the nursing home, Trishka Stevens watched the flood rise. Overturning furniture. Splitting her mattress. Crawling up her neck and lapping into her mouth.

She had lived 75 years, despite heart trouble and a broken hip that forced her to start using a wheelchair a few years ago.

The big wall of water churned by Hurricane Katrina made one more day of life seem impossible.

Terrified howls came from anyone who could produce them: staff members who hadn't already left St. Rita's Nursing Home in Chalmette, La., and the five dozen residents still trapped inside.

"I didn't think I was going to make it," Stevens said Thursday.

She was wrong. Several neighbors - who had struggled to evacuate their own homes as Katrina's wind and water raged - arrived and got her to safety, and on Thursday, Stevens was reunited in Florida with her family, who spent four long days after the storm struck wondering whether she was alive or dead.

"When that man came in, I thought he was an angel," Stevens said.

Her troubles weren't over. Stevens endured three patient care centers (one transfer in Texas after the next hurricane, Rita, forced broad Gulf Coast evacuations), nagging chest pain and broken ribs.

She is still frail, tired and sore - but finally with her loved ones. Her eyes were filled with happy tears Thursday.

"I'm not sure if this will be enough," Joe Amato joked as he brought in a fresh box of tissues just before his wife and her mother embraced for the first time after the tragedy.

Through coordinated efforts between the nonprofit advocacy group A Perfect Cause and determination by Stevens' family, she moved into a Mount Dora nursing home not far from where her daughter Karen Amato, 54, lives with Joe and two children.

Stevens considers herself one of the lucky St. Rita's residents. Thirty-four people perished in that nursing home. As of Thursday, three others were still missing.

"They should have evacuated us before this happened," Stevens said. "I don't know if my roommate got out."

St. Rita's owners, Salvador and Mable Mangano, have been charged with one criminal count of negligence for each of the deaths. They allegedly failed to heed evacuation warnings as Katrina struck Aug. 29.

Their attorney, Jim Cobb, said the two decided moving sick, elderly patients was dangerous, and St. Bernard Parish never issued a mandatory evacuation order.

[Last modified September 30, 2005, 01:35:17]