Ronald Cruz, a third-year biological sciences major at UC Irvine, has had a pretty dramatic experience. As I approached him for an interview, he was thumbing through this very newspaper with what seemed to be an amused smile on his lips.
Cruz likes it here at UCI.
Cruz used to attend the University of New Orleans. He won’t be going back, though; deserted houses and fallen debris are all that remain of his old neighborhood.
He left New Orleans with his family at 6 a.m. on the day that Hurricane Katrina hit. The decision to leave was a hard one to make, and his sister, Daisy, whom he described as ‘just one of those stubborn people,’ opted to stay.
Cruz’s family traveled to Dallas where, biding their time in a hotel, they saw images of the devastation on television.
Running short on funds, the family moved out of the hotel and waited in a Red Cross shelter at Hirsch Coliseum in Slidell, La. for news of Cruz’s sister.
The shelter provided its residents with food, water, bedding and books.
‘The actual environment was good, but, I mean, as far as people’s hopes … a lot of people were … distraught at what happened,’ Cruz said.
Evacuees would make calls in packed lines or wait for news from the Red Cross to find out if their relatives were alive or dead.
With so many families crowding the Coliseum, this task of communicating became a brutally difficult one.
‘I had a brother here in California, and then I have a sister who was in Missouri, and basically they were doing our calling for us,’ Cruz said.
Using Red Cross registries, the Cruz family discovered that Daisy survived. Having determined this, the family had to figure out what to do next.
They got together at Shreveport, La. The Cruz family opted to move to California because they had relatives and friends here, and because of the good school system.
Cruz arrived at UCI just before the start of fall quarter.
UCI’s Office of Admissions and Relations with Schools accepted Cruz as a visiting student.
Although Cruz is settled in school for now, his status as a visiting student at UCI only lasts for a quarter.
Cruz also talked about the difficulty his family had to endure through the process of rebuilding. His family was living paycheck to paycheck before the hurricane hit. Ronald’s father is 65 years old.
‘You didn’t see any support, you didn’t hear anything [from the government],’ Cruz said.
Now living in Irvine, Cruz can’t help but reminisce about his home city.