New Orleans -- Darlene Kattan is trying to get settled into her new apartment in the West Bank of New Orleans. Everything, from the furniture to the bedding, the decorations to the kitchenware, from the clothes and the jewelry to the shoes, everything she now owns was donated to her by friends and friends of friends. “I went from designer couture to refugee chic,” she said of her new wardrobe. “Today I am Teresa, yesterday I was Clara.”

It’s a lot easier for Darlene to joke about her misfortune than to cry about it, as she had been doing for most of the past year. Used to the good life, she has had to live off the generosity of friends and strangers alike, going from house to house, moving 18 times in the past 12 months.

The former financier is one of the thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina, the “equal-opportunity destroyer,” as she likes to call the storm, which affected young and old, rich and poor. Before the storm, she lived in an elegant three-bedroom house overlooking Lake Pontchartrain. Now her modest one-bedroom apartment feels like a palace.

But it’s not the material things she lost in the hurricane or her once-active social circle that she is grieving for, but the memories of her life. “Sometimes I feel I have no past; there is nothing to document my existence before the storm,” she said. There are no childhood pictures, no letters from her friends, no treasured gifts. Everything was destroyed by Katrina.

Kattan, the daughter of a Honduran immigrant, used to volunteer with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana, and is now its executive director. She dedicates her time to helping members of the vast Hispanic community here pick up the pieces of their lives.

As tough as it may be, rebuilding lives has turned out to be easier than rebuilding homes. Driving around New Orleans, you see whole neighborhoods that look as if the storm had just hit yesterday. The sight of debris piled up along the streets and the smell of decayed animal corpses make a once-thriving metropolis look like a no-man’s land.

Hundreds of thousands of people who had no insurance or money to re-build their homes have had to settle in other areas. Many of those who had insurance are being treated poorly by insurance companies that are hiding behind the fine print to avoid responsibility for covering the damage.

A year after the storm, the government still has not decided which neighborhoods should be rebuilt first, and everyone seems to be on edge, waiting to see if this new hurricane season will be more merciful than the last.      

Like Darlene, Daniel Millan is not letting his misfortune get the best of him. Millan took it upon himself to rebuild his home. “My two brother-in-laws are contractors in Florida, so I brought them here to help me bring our house up to living standards,” he told me. Having fled to Houston after the storm flooded his brand-new house, Millan returned four months later to start anew.

He worked tirelessly to recoup his losses and to help the city he’s come to know and love get back on its feet. As the manager of an upscale restaurant in the French Quarter, Millan is now working hard to send the message that not everything in New Orleans is destroyed. “There are areas that are thriving. We’re back in business, and people need to know we are here to welcome them back to our city,” he said. A much-needed welcome from a city that desperately needs support.

New Orleans is pretty lucky to have people like Darlene and Daniel who are willing to help rebuild the city’s soul in spite of their own hardships. “It would be easy to move to Houston, Dallas or Miami,” said Darlene. “But this is my city, and I have a moral obligation to stay and help. If you had a sick child, you would not say, ‘I’ll be back in 20 years when you recuperate.’ You have to make the sacrifice and help him heal.”