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Sartin, along with her 2-year-old daughter, Alicia, and her friend, Toi Jones, 18, fled the Gulf Coast with another family to Petersburg. They are now living in cramped quarters at the River Road Terrace apartments with a relative of the family that brought them to Virginia.
"I took a couple pieces of clothes. I thought my house was going to be OK," Sartin says. "But once the flood gates opened, that's when it hit."
Sartin never returned to her submerged apartment. She first sought shelter at her aunt's trailer in Slidell, La. But with no electricity, the Louisiana heat caused her baby, Alicia, to break out in severe hives. She decided to make a break for Virginia, where she hoped the weather would be cooler and there would be some relief. She's been waiting on assistance from FEMA for almost a month.
"I just cried until I couldn't cry anymore," says Sartin, who made her living as a waitress in New Orleans. "It seems like you just ask for help, but they don't do certain things that you need. I just want a place to stay."
Sartin plans to start a new life in the Tri-Cities. She hopes to find a job, put her child in school and, eventually, send for her 3-year-old son, Jose, who was evacuated to Florida with his father.
Fortunately, she met up with Lorene Mckensie of Chesterfield County by chance. Mckensie has taken Sartin, Jones and Alicia under her wing. She's been trying to find them permanent housing of their own.
"Ever since I met [Sartin], we've just been really close," Mckensie said. "I told her she's my adopted daughter. I got three adopted daughters - one 18, one 22 and one 2."
Each day, Mckensie, an employee at Dupont, checks in on her so-called daughters. Yesterday, she even took them to services at her church, Springfield Baptist in Sutherland.
"You know how your heart bothers you when you've been wanting to do something for someone?" she explained. "And more or less, I wanted to do it hands on. Giving a donation to the Red Cross or Salvation Army or whoever you give it to, there's no guarantee that's it's really going there."
Mckensie has tried to take New Orleans off of the women's minds. She's taken them out to eat or out to the movies, anything to help them forget for a while. Jones, who had been attending community college in Mississippi, has already found a factory job in the Walthall area. She hopes to enroll in a Virginia college in the spring.
For Sartin, the adjustment was difficult at first. She's never been this far north before. She misses the familiarities of home, like Bunny brand bread and real seafood - the delicacy of crayfish, mainly. "There's no crawfish up here!" she joked with Mckensie.
But Sartin has discovered the Appomattox River. She's spent hours on its banks, just listening and relaxing at the water.
"I go there and it reminds me of home," she said. "I went there yesterday and sat for two hours. I try not to think about anything."
With most of her family scattered across the country, Sartin, at times, feels a bit lost. But that's when Mckensie jumps in to reassure her.
"I tell her, 'As long as I'm here and I'm alive, you will have somebody.'"
* Julie Buchanan may be reached at 722-5155.
