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LaToya Cantrell, 34
President, Broadmoor Improvement Association and Manager, Greater New Orleans Education Foundation

In the search for silver linings from Hurricane Katrina, one commonly voiced hope was that crime and exploitation would magically disappear from the New Orleans social landscape as the city rebuilt. Meanwhile, LaToya Cantrell was preparing for a more realistic outcome.

"The social ills that plagued our city before the storm, you still have to deal with them now -- the criminals, the drug dealers, the slum landlords," says Cantrell, president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association (BIA).

That's why amid the destruction the storm and flood brought to her Broadmoor neighborhood, Cantrell also sees the chance for real and lasting change. "The biggest opportunity is the people," she says. "We never had the mass of the people behind us like we do now that the storm has galvanized us. When the people are united and working toward common goals, you can really get things done."

Cantrell moved to New Orleans from Los Angeles in 1990 to attend Xavier University. She stayed after graduation and in 2000 she and her husband bought their first home on Louisiana Avenue Parkway in Broadmoor.

She became president of the BIA in 2005. The association itself dates back to the 1930s but was formally incorporated in the 1970s when its members sued a realty company for racially divisive "block-busting" market manipulation. Since the storm, the organization has played a pivotal role in planning the neighborhood's comeback. Cantrell convened its first post-disaster general meeting in January and has been working on the neighborhood's top three priorities: housing, education and the resurrection of its library.

Cantrell also is manager of the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, which acts as a fiscal agent for public schools and helps connect them to private sector resources. -- McNulty

Photo © Michael C. Hebert

Deuce McAllister, 27
Running Back, New Orleans Saints

Dogged determination and ferocious focus have propelled Deuce McAllister into the pantheon of Saints greats. But his humility, generosity and altruistic spirit have made him a giant to scores of young people in the Gulf South for reasons that have nothing to do with football.

"It's just me being me," says McAllister, now in his sixth NFL season. "You don't do it for the fame, you don't do it for the cameras or anything. You do it because you're trying to help. You do it because that kid could have been you when you were growing up. You want to show them that there's somebody who cares for them and you just want to give them an opportunity."

Created in 2002, the Deuce McAllister Catch 22 Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of underprivileged youth in New Orleans and his home state of Mississippi.

During the school year, the foundation sponsors outings for students to museums, sporting events and other destinations. Catch 22 treats more than a hundred students to an annual $100 holiday shopping trip. And at Thanksgiving, the foundation teams up with grocery stores to provide meals to needy families. McAllister also works with the volunteer mentoring program Big Brothers Big Sisters.

The Saints all-time leading rusher says he owes much of his success to the kindness and compassion of others. It's that appreciation that inspires his work in the community.

"There were so many people who looked out for me," McAllister says. "My dad was on the road being a truck driver. My mom worked two jobs, so I had coaches and teachers and cousins who looked out for me. Whether it was bringing me home or whether it was staying after school with me. I had so many people who helped me along the way, so I just wanted to try to pass it on as much as possible." -- Norris

Jeffrey Goldring, 39
Vice Chairman, Republic Beverage Co. and Philanthropist

When Jeffrey Goldring was a young boy, his grandfather sat him down and instilled in him a few words to live by. "He said, 'We have a very prosperous business and we take dollars out of the community, and we need to give back to the community,'" Goldring recalls.

Goldring, vice chairman of the Republic Beverage Company and a fourth generation member of his family to be part of the beverage business, never forgot his grandfather's lesson, or how his parents were always involved in one charity after another.

Philanthropy for the Goldrings is a family value. For years, Goldring has served on various charity boards including the Goldring Family Foundation board, which typically funds education organizations. In past years, the foundation didn't normally grant monies to public schools, focusing instead on higher education institutions. Since Katrina and with the emergence of charter schools, however, Goldring and his fellow board members have been exploring ways "to make a difference in the way the schools are going to be set up in the future."

Goldring doesn't limit his activities to just formal education. Perhaps his greatest passion lies in the city's music and culture, and he brings his skills as a businessman and philanthropist to numerous musical organizations. He sits on the board of the Tipitina's Foundation and is an advisor to Irvin Mayfield's New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.

After meeting Mayfield and Ron Markham, the orchestra's founders, Goldring was overwhelmed by the duo's dedication to preserving jazz music and eventually creating a jazz institute in the city that he immediately made a significant donation to their group.

"I believe what makes up New Orleans is the culture, and that culture is the music and the people," Goldring says. "That's what this community is made up of, and that's why people come to New Orleans, to be a part of that."

That's the kind of talk and action that would make a grandfather proud. -- Winkler-Schmit

Leigh Collins, 39
Counselor, Metairie Park Country Day School, and Yoga Instructor and Owner, Artopia House Yoga Studio

If you happen to see children dashing into the Confetti Kids playground in Algiers Point to do yoga poses in the sunshine, there's a good chance yoga instructor and school counselor Leigh Collins is nearby.

Collins, head of counseling at Metairie Park Country Day School, opened the Artopia House Yoga Studio in her Algiers neighborhood last year. For her, yoga and counseling often go hand in hand. Yoga can be an effective tool for self-healing and wellness, she says. Collins sometimes also uses yoga techniques to enhance her therapy work, especially with children.

"Traditional talk therapy or psychoactive medication can be extremely effective for reducing stress in adults, but kids often don't have the language to express difficult emotions," she says. "Helping kids realize that they can use their minds to exercise some control over their bodies teaches them that they can use their minds to control their emotions as well."

Artopia House was scheduled to open the same weekend Katrina struck; the disaster only pushed its debut back by a few weeks. In October, Collins began offering free yoga classes from the studio.

"Lots of people showed up who were having trouble sleeping at night; it was a crazy time after all," she says.

The business opened in November 2005 and offers an array of styles and class levels, including children's classes.

Collins is co-author of the book When a Parent Is Seriously Ill, based on her experiences counseling children.

"We got funding to do just a brochure, but the more we talked with kids, the more we learned and it kept growing." Book proceeds benefit Jewish Family Services. -- McNulty

Jeffrey Thomas, 35
Attorney and Consultant

Like countless others, Jeffrey Thomas did whatever he could to help others in the first weeks following Katrina.

Evacuated to Baton Rouge, he volunteered with the Louisiana Forest Service to set up relief shelters and distribute food and water. He also helped to facilitate the rescue of 83 cats in Lakeview. As the recovery process shifted from personal to political, Thomas' areas of expertise came together to create his role in the rebuilding effort.

"Right now, we're dealing with environmental issues, legal issues and governmental reform issues," says Thomas, who moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane Law School eight years ago after working as a biology teacher and consultant in Washington, D.C. "Those are all things I've worked at at various levels in my professional career. It's my opportunity to help out."

Thomas served on the Bring New Orleans Back Commission's Urban Planning Committee and authored a report critical of the environmental sampling the government conducted in flooded communities. His role gave him insight into the gap between the planning process and the allocation of federal recovery dollars. Realizing the dire need for the cash-strapped city to maximize federal relief monies, Thomas authored a 30-page document examining the legal aspects of disaster-relief money. The report has gained traction with officials from the mayor's office, City Council and neighborhood groups.

He's not all work and no play, however. His hobby of landscape photography earned him a spot in the Katrina Exposed exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and he enjoys singing Frank Sinatra covers at French Quarter bars. A member of the law firm Simon, Peragine, Smith and Redfearn, Thomas is committed to rebuilding. "The planning process is now wrapping up and it's time to implement those ideas, so the city is at a critical juncture right now," Thomas says. "Where we go from here, I'm not sure, but I plan to stay involved." -- Etheridge

Lindsay Hannah, 30
Heather Knight, 28
Co-founders, Chaux Vive

Unless you happen to be visiting relatives buried there, a trip to the cemetery generally doesn't top the must-do list for tourists in most cities. New Orleans, of course, is an exception, and the complexes of above-ground tombs here are a distinctive cultural attraction. Visitors to New Orleans' most historic cemeteries are seeing an increasing number of tombs that have been restored in a historically authentic manner, thanks to Chaux Vive, the architectural conservation and preservation firm founded by Lindsay Hannah, Heather Knight and another partner.

Chaux Vive means "quick lime" in French and is a reference to its founders' dedication to using traditional methods and materials, such as lime washes.

"We want them to look as they did originally but also have that patina of age, and we do that by using original materials," says Hannah.

She first came to New Orleans in 2001 with a team of students in the University of Pennsylvania's historic preservation program working to restore St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 through the Save America's Treasure Project. She was so enchanted with the city and its architecture that after earning her master's degree in historic preservation, she made New Orleans her home.

That 2001 visit was also when she met Knight, who was raised in New Orleans and has a master's degree in preservation studies from Tulane University School of Architecture. Knight has worked with local artisans such as master plasterer Earl Barthe to record their traditional methods and stories.

In 2002, they formed Chaux Vive. Their work in the cemeteries, though performed for private clients, helps preserve a public asset for the city. Chaux Vive also takes on restoration projects of historic homes and other buildings. The company recently restored plaster walls in the Mary Plantation house, an 18th century home in Braithwaite that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They also conduct education and outreach programs, making presentations for historic trusts and schools.

"Our approach is hands on and academic as well," says Knight. "Most historians are locked in archives, but we get to apply the history we know and help save these historic sites. We get to prolong the history through its physical structures."

Since Hurricane Katrina, Knight and Hannah have been hard at work assessing damage and making repairs to historic sites in the area. They conducted assessments of a number of historic cemeteries and submitted them to the nonprofit organization Save Our Cemeteries, surveyed hurricane impact on historic districts and properties in New Orleans and repaired damaged tombs in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. In addition, they consulted on hurricane-damaged historic buildings on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, including Beauvoir in Biloxi and the De La Pointe-Krebs House (a.k.a. the Old Spanish Fort) in Pascagoula. -- McNulty

Jim Fitzmorris, 37
Playwright and Professor, Tulane University Theater Department

Playwright Jim Fitzmorris didn't lose a house to the hurricane, but his loss was certainly personal and irreplaceable. Katrina washed away his favorite setting: Lakeview.

Following the storm, Fitzmorris hadn't seen his mother for a month and a half when he met up with her in Louisville for a cousin's wedding. He confided in her.

"Mom, all my plays are gone," Fitzmorris told her. "When I said that, I didn't mean the text -- I have those on my computer -- but that whole world I was writing about."

Fitzmorris has long mined his stored memories of a life lived in Lakeview. He grew up there among an extended Irish-American family of cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Many consider place to be an essential part of any writer's life, and Fitzmorris, who teaches in Tulane's theater department, has paid tribute to his New Orleans neighborhood.

His play, The Visitation, is set in the mid-1950s to early '60s and, as Fitzmorris says, "without ever really saying the word 'Lakeview,'" concerns the beginnings of his New Orleans community. In the introduction, he refers to it as "the silent heart of the city."

Fitzmorris' plays are realistic, and the award-winning With Malice For All, also set in Lakeview, portrays the dark underbelly of New Orleans' politics.

Even with the destruction of his childhood home, Fitzmorris doesn't feel he's lost his New Orleans muse. His most recent effort, The Last Madam, a stage adaptation of Christine Wiltz's nonfiction book about famed New Orleans bordello entrepreneur Norma Wallace, enjoyed an extended run at Southern Rep. While many of his fellow playwrights were busy writing hurricane plays, Fitzmorris decided to take some time away from the destruction and will debut his Christmas yarn Yuletide this December.

Don't think for a moment, however, that Fitzmorris has suddenly mellowed. He can't; there's too much new material. "Thank God Ray (Nagin) went a little crazy," Fitzmorris says. "If all that good government nonsense had continued, I'd have had nothing to write about." -- Winkler-Schmit

Zachary Manuel, 17
Student and Documentary Filmmaker

When high school student Zachary Manuel was told to make a documentary for class, he chose a subject that was close at hand but seemed little understood -- the influx of Latino people to the New Orleans area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Most coverage of the subject seemed to be less than positive, he says, and accounts of immigrant workers being exploited motivated him to document their story.

"If New Orleans is supposed to be such a melting pot for all these different cultures, it shouldn't be a big deal for new people to come here," says Manuel, a senior at Benjamin Franklin High School and the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.

The result has gotten him far more than a completed school assignment. Called Exodus, the film is a record of some of the challenges Latinos in the area have faced since the storm and their contributions to the recovery effort. A 7-minute preliminary version of the film was selected as a finalist for the Louisiana Shorts Film Festival in October. Manuel plans to submit the complete version, which is about 25 minutes long, to film festivals out of state.

The teenager landed his first job a few years ago at an ad agency working with his father, jazz vocalist Phillip Manuel. By age 15, the younger Manuel moved from doing basic office work to storyboarding television commercials for the firm. Later, he got a shot directing his own public service announcement emphasizing the importance of strong families. Manuel also was assistant director for a music video shot in New Orleans that recently was entered in a contest organized by the band Pearl Jam.

Over the summer, he attended a Media Arts Program at the University of California in Los Angeles. After finishing high school next year, Manuel hopes to attend college in southern California and continue his work in film and video. -- McNulty

Matt McBride, 31
Engineer and Watchdog

Low-lying New Orleans neighborhoods face high stakes when it comes to drainage, but these days they also have a uniquely qualified advocate working on their behalf. Matt McBride, a mechanical engineer whose Broadmoor house was flooded following Hurricane Katrina, has emerged as a watchdog over the work the Army Corps of Engineers has undertaken since the storm.

"The Corps promised to fix the New Orleans drainage system with money appropriated in December. Their deadline was June and the work is still not done," he says. "I am here to push them to do that work."

Equipped with a technical education and professional experience at engineering firms, he sifts through Corps documents and tries to pressure the Corps to do a better job. He uses a Web blog, emails, and news releases to local and national media to spread the word.

"My role is to keep the public informed of the stuff the Corps hasn't or won't," McBride says. "We need to get it out there that the recovery (of drainage projects) is not finished."

For instance, together with his Broadmoor neighbor Joe Thompson, he launched a campaign demanding that pumping station roofs damaged in the hurricanes be repaired -- work that had gone unfinished and threatened further damage to the equipment inside.

"I feel like the right guy in the right place at the right time to do this," says McBride. "I'm an outsider (from the Corps) with a fire under my ass and just enough knowledge to make me dangerous." He recently filed lawsuits to obtain Corps documents regarding flood-gate operation plans for the next storm.

"That's important information to have in areas where people are rebuilding," he says. -- McNulty

Nathalie Gomes, 35
Dancer and Dance Educator

For Nathalie Gomes, dance is much more than just moving to music.

"Dance is an art form, a way of expressing yourself," says Gomes, a native of a small town outside of Lyon, France. "You forget about everything else when you dance, and it's also a great way to relieve stress."

Having lived in New York City for 11 years, Gomes experienced firsthand this positive attribute of dance in the aftermath of 9/11. In post-K New Orleans, Gomes sees the same release through her adult dance classes. "People just come and let go, leaving their worries behind them." she says.

While Gomes says her focus of late is on her role as a dance instructor, her own career is quite distinguished. She moved to New York in 1994 and became an understudy of famed dancer Frankie Manning, who, now in his early 90s and still vivacious, is living proof of the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of dance. The Lindy Hop, a swing style that began in the 1920s and moved to big band music, is Gomes' specialty. She's credited with adding her own athleticism and modern influences to create a signature choreography that helped her earn the title of World Swing Dance Champion from 2002 to 2004.

She leads dance classes in Jefferson Parish schools, holds adult classes at Tulane University and is organizing the Crescent City Lindy Celebration Dec. 1-3, which is expected to attract swing enthusiasts from all over the country.

Gomes has a master's degree in international relations, and lived in New Orleans in 1993 while she completed a summer internship at the local French-American Chamber of Commerce. She moved back in March 2005 and says she has found a place where she feels at home. "I love all the culture and architecture," she says, "but there's just so much live music -- so much to dance to." -- Etheridge

Christopher McCrory, 35
Development Director, Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency

Hurricane Katrina put a lot on hold in the New Orleans region, but the need for organ transplants wasn't one of them. Time is critical for patients waiting for organs or scheduled for transplants, so the people behind the Louisiana Organ Procurement Agency (LOPA) wasted none of it.

"Our focus the whole time was making sure no one died on our watch," says Christopher McCrory, development director for LOPA. "Within 36 hours of the storm, we were in Lafayette and back in operation."

LOPA's mission is to educate the medical community and general public about organ- and tissue-donation issues, to work with families through the donation process, to recover the donations and match them with those in need. While LOPA is based in Metairie, the organization operates regional offices and has representatives across the state.

Raised in Gentilly, McCrory earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of Kentucky but returned home in 2003 to work for LOPA. Since then, the agency has been one of the top performing organizations of its type in the country, with 33 percent of Louisiana's population registered as donors. In the time McCrory has been in charge of development, the number of registered donors has increased by 34 percent.

"The key is our tremendous staff of community-outreach people," says McCrory. "They're out there pounding the pavement every day and having the one-on-one interactions we need to get our message to people."

McCrory says the agency focuses its discussions on the gifts of life and healing inherent with organ donation.

"We're an agency of second chances, and (organ donation) gives people the chance to leave a legacy," he says. -- McNulty

Kathryn Destreza, 36
Director of Humane Law Enforcement, Louisiana SPCA

Kathryn Destreza was told from the beginning there was only so much time. As director of humane law enforcement for the Louisiana SPCA, she was leading a team of hundreds of volunteers and staff members throughout New Orleans on the largest animal rescue effort in the country's history after Katrina. Veteran rescuers kept reminding Destreza that at some point the rescue mission would become one of recovery.

"They told us after two to three weeks, the animals would start dying of hunger and dehydration," she says. "It never really happened. We did find some dead animals, yes, but most of the animals were so resilient. Through October we were still rescuing animals."

Destreza, who has been with the local SPCA for 14 years, arrived in Houston with her agency's sheltered animals on the day the storm hit. When she and her staff found out the levees broke later that day, they immediately drove back to New Orleans and opened a temporary shelter. They started rescuing animals on Tuesday evening.

Destreza doesn't blame people for leaving pets behind, because nobody expected the levees to break. Soon after arriving back in the city, she began receiving thousands of calls from distraught pet owners asking for their animals to be rescued. Destreza sent her staff out to specific house addresses, but after a while she realized that most owners wouldn't be able to reach her. Knowing there were thousands of animals in need, she divided the city into sections and sent teams -- often with rescue teams searching for human victims -- door to door looking for stranded pets. By mid-October, Destreza's team had saved more than 8,500 animals.

Destreza knows personally what it's like to be separated from furry-legged companions. Her cat and two dogs were sent elsewhere until she could find a new apartment. "It was rough," she says. "But at least I knew they were safe." -- Winkler-Schmit

Marshall Love, 34
Owner, Loveswimming

When Marshall Love entered the Master of Business Administration program at Tulane University, he thought he was growing up and moving away from his first love: swimming. He was a competitive swimmer and swimming teacher during his undergraduate years at Texas A&M University and felt that swimming was something he would do to get through college, but that afterwards it was time to get serious. During an entrepreneurial course taught by John Elstrott, founder of Celestial Seasonings Tea, Love changed his mind.

"He helped me understand that people do great things with skills that aren't always valued in the world the way they could be," Love says.

From Elstrott's course, Love developed a business plan, and on Valentine's Day 2002, Loveswimming was born. Love and his business partner, Kaye Doirin, rented a 900-square-foot office space on Magazine Street, put a small vinyl pool inside and soon were teaching swimming to more than 100 kids per week.

What separates Loveswimming from an average class at the YMCA is warm saltwater; because kids don't weigh enough to retain heat, the water is kept at a constant 90 degrees. If kids are warm, they're more receptive to learning, Love says. By using a chlorine generator, which produces chlorine naturally without having to add chemical tablets, their pool has none of the noxious fumes associated with indoor pools. Plus, Love and Doirin maintain a low 3-to-1 student-teacher ratio.

It didn't take long for Loveswimming to expand beyond its original location to a warehouse on Tchoupitoulas Street, where each week kids as young as 6 months and adults as old as 85 learn to swim. Loveswimming also has expanded outside New Orleans, opening a location in Lafayette. -- Winkler-Schmit

Burke McFerrin, 31
Children's Program Administrator, Jefferson Parish Library System

There are a lot of children -- and parents -- in the area who must be grateful Burke McFerrin likes New Orleans cooking. She is the children's program administrator for Jefferson Parish Library System (JPLS), and just two days before Hurricane Katrina struck she had received a job offer in her home state of Alabama. On Wednesday, Aug. 31, with the agony of the New Orleans area at its most acute, McFerrin turned down the offer.

"I just couldn't leave," she says. "They really don't have anything to eat there" in Alabama.

Of course, her real motivation to stay was to help reopen the JPLS after the storm. With her own Lakeview condo uninhabitable, McFerrin couch-surfed and lived on a sailboat for six months while she worked to make the library system's facilities available to the public again.

The first libraries reopened Oct. 3, 2005, and immediately began issuing "Katrina cards" to allow people outside Jefferson Parish to access the libraries' services. In the recovery period, the libraries have provided far more than reading materials, including computer access for residents, distribution points for aid applications and meeting areas. For children, the libraries have provided some much-needed stability and a learning environment, plus programs by storytellers and performers. In addition, libraries that needed significant rebuilding after the storm are being redesigned with more resources for children, such as reading and storytelling rooms, craft rooms and more computers.

For her work before and after the storm, McFerrin was named JPLS employee of the year for 2005. Parish President Aaron Broussard named her government employee of the year across Jefferson Parish for that same year. -- McNulty

Niki Arena, 34
Software Designer

Anyone who filed an insurance claim because of Katrina knows how long it can take. Months can go by without having a claims adjustor assigned to your case, and after that, the adjustor has to write up the claim and send it in. Anything that could shave some time off of this interminable process would be nothing short of a miracle.

Meet miracle-worker Niki Arena.

The software designer from Gretna has developed ClickClaims, a web-based system that can handle thousands of insurance claims from start to finish. In the past, when a catastrophe struck, major insurance carriers would travel to the disaster site and set up an insurance claims center. Insurance representatives would hire independent adjusting firms to manage and handle the thousands of loss notices from an insurance company's customers. These adjusting firms would then hire hundreds, sometimes thousands, of independent adjustors to process individual claims. Everything was done on paper.

Arena's system, which is the flagship product of E-Claim.com, makes life much easier on the independent adjusting firms by establishing a virtual catastrophe center on the Web. The insurance company can send loss claims directly to the site, independent adjustors' information is stored there, and adjustors are contacted by an automatic call center. Best of all, the call center immediately starts contacting customers to initiate the claims process.

Arena knows firsthand how much of an improvement ClickClaims is.

"When my home was damaged by Katrina it took four months for (my) insurance company to contact me," Arena says. "If their adjusting firm had used my system, I would have been contacted within a day."

Adjusting firms that did use Arena's system were able to get insurance settlement checks to relieved (instead of angry) customers much faster. The timesavings garnered ClickClaims an E-Fusion Award at a recent insurance technology conference. -- Winkler-Schmit

Andrea McNeil, 29
Political Events Coordinator and Founder, A.M. Marketing Inc.

The past year has been an extraordinary time for local politics, with a delayed and highly contentious mayoral campaign, a congressional election and voters facing landmark constitutional amendments concerning tax assessors and levee administration. Yet these were the waters into which Andrea McNeil took her first plunge into New Orleans politics, working on campaigns for mayoral contenders Ron Forman and Mitch Landrieu, Arnie Fielkow's City Council bid and Karen Carter's run for Congress.

A native of Chicago, McNeil moved from Jacksonville, Fla., to New Orleans in 2004, after a business trip convinced her to make the Crescent City her home. Here she founded A.M. Marketing Inc. to help provide college graduates with opportunities to build professional experience right out of school.

After Hurricane Katrina, however, McNeil decided to dedicate herself to civic involvement, becoming a certified elections commissioner and encouraging others to get involved.

"I feel the rebuilding takes each one of us, and my role and responsibility is to help get people motivated to participate in the democratic process," McNeil says.

She is heavily involved in Young Leadership Council (YLC), a professional volunteer organization. She helped plan the group's largest annual fundraiser, the Role Model Awards Gala, and has gathered volunteers to help other nonprofits in the area. McNeil put her marketing skills and experience to work for YLC's membership committee and recently was selected for the council's Leadership Development Series. In October, she was named YLC vice president of development for 2007. McNeil also works with the local United Way through its "loaned executive" program to help raise money for health and human services nonprofits. -- McNulty

Becky Zaheri, 39
Founder, Katrina Krewe

When Becky Zaheri first returned to New Orleans, the city where she was born and raised, she surveyed the wreckage, then looked toward the future, both the city's and her family's.

"When I saw that mountain of trash on West End (Boulevard), I was appalled," she says. "I was checking out other cities to live, even going so far as to research houses and schools. Every trip I took back (during her evacuation in Baton Rouge), I realized that it was not getting better, that it was going to take everybody's effort to help out. I thought, 'If I'm going to move my family back here, I have to do something to make it better for them.'"

The first step Zaheri took was to email her sentiments on the considerable trash problem the city faced to everyone in her address book. The response was amazing, Zaheri says. The result? Katrina Krewe, an all-volunteer debris/trash cleanup operation that to date has mustered roughly 10,000 volunteers from all over the world who have cleaned up an estimated 250,000 tons of debris.

Zaheri -- also a member of the Women of the Storm group, which has worked to bring members of Congress to the Gulf Coast to view hurricane damage -- now has shifted the focus of the Katrina Krewe to "Kids Against Trash," a program to teach children in area schools about the problems of litter and, hopefully, pave the way for a cleaner New Orleans in the future.

"The littering problem here is something we've always struggled with," says Zaheri, who recognizes that litter still pops up in areas the Katrina Krewe has cleaned up. "But we have the chance now for change. It's not a change that's going to happen overnight, but we need to be patient and diligent to make it better." -- Etheridge

Adam Norris is a sports anchor at WGNO-TV, ABC26 in New Orleans.