Rosary In Hand, She Found Her "Mortal Angels"
Submitted:		N.O.V.A. December 2005
Source:			Times Picayune 12-04-2005

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"Lying up there on that air mattress in the attic, I didn't think I would
ever get out. At one point I thought I would drown. I had my rosary wrapped
around my arm."

Lois Rice, 62, a paraplegic, was staying with her 83-year-old aunt when
Katrina hit the Lower 9th Ward. New Orleans police officers cut through the
roof to get her out, boated her to high ground, then transported her by
truck to the Superdome, where nurses kept her comfortable until an ambulance
could move her to Ochsner Foundation Hospital.

"The beauty of the entire thing is I met so many mortal angels in my
journey," Rice said. "Everything just seemed to be happening so fast, it was
all so very pleasant.

"When I got to Ochsner the staff was so attentive and asked me if I wanted
to watch the news, and of course I did, so a bunch of us were lined up in
wheelchairs watching the president speak on the TV. Then someone came down
and said there were concerns about the hospital getting water."

Rice was moved again, this time to a shelter at Louisiana State University
in Baton Rouge for evacuees with special medical needs. There, shelter
volunteers Dave Lakvald and graduate student Marcio Araujo made it their
mission to reunite Rice with her family in Silver Spring, Md.

Araujo used the Internet to spread the word about Rice's predicament.

"He came to me and he told me about an angel named Chuck," said Rice --
Chuck Fazio of Alexandria, Va., a pilot with a plane ready to pick her up in
Baton Rouge and take her home.

"When I was in that attic I was saying many, many a rosary; I was trying to
live through my faith in that attic," Rice said. "God's answer to me was
those police officers, Marcio, Chuck and each and every one of the mortal
angels I met along the way. When I met Chuck I told him he was an angel. He
said, 'No, I am not,' and I told him that each and every time he looks in
the mirror he should know that he was God's answer to me. My angel."

Soon after she arrived home, Rice reached her 62nd birthday. She said she
considers the moment she escaped that attic the beginning of a new life.

"I like to see the miracles in everything," she said. "It's a privilege to
be alive."