He had been retired for about two years, and Mickey Jung, who was born and raised in New Orleans, was content living as a bachelor in an attic apartment near Loyola University where he completed his undergraduate degree decades earlier.
Like most Saturdays, he woke up early, grabbed a newspaper and headed to a coffee shop down the street.
"The neighborhood was eerily quiet," he said. "Especially for a Saturday."
The coffee shop was no different.
He didn't think too much about it, until he read in the Times-Picayune that meteorologists were predicting a massive storm would slam into his city on Monday.
He called his sister who lived nearby, discovered she was already on her way out of the city, then went back to his apartment, quickly packed, and hit the road to Memphis, Tenn.
He stayed there with his aunt for a few days before deciding to stay with his niece, KiKi O'Shea, in College Station.
The storm hit early Monday as a Category 4 storm -- breaching levees, flooding streets and destroying entire neighborhoods.
It was "a way out of no way," is how Yolanda Richards described her family's journey from project housing in New Orleans' Ninth Ward to a new life in College Station post-Katrina.
Yolanda and her husband, Willie, credit God's will and their GPS system for leading them to the Brazos Valley -- the electronic device told them hotel rooms still were available that far west of home in a place they had never heard of.
They left on a Friday, spent 18 hours in traffic -- at one point traveling just 25 miles in five hours -- but finally arrived in College Station around 3 a.m. with a group of about 16 family members who also fled from the storm.
Five years after the storm hit the Gulf Coast, Jung and the Richards family remain in College Station (the rest of the Richards group returned to Louisiana).
The 76-year-old Jung, a former Marine and retired English teacher, who educated students at the high school and collegiate level, said he's thought about returning to the city more frequently in the past year or so.
"I don't think I want to die in Texas," he said. "I'd like to return to my native backyard for that."
The Richards family said when they visit family in New Orleans, they get homesick for Aggieland.
"I wouldn't go back for anything, this has been such a blessing to my family," Yolanda Richards said.
Life in Texas was rough for a while, but the kindness of the locals helped them through, they said.
Willie, Yolanda, their son Willie Jr., and daughters Zaria and Cameron, lived at the Lincoln Recreation Center for a month.
"We had only brought three changes of clothes. We really thought we'd just be gone for the weekend," Yolanda Richards said. "But, after the storm hit, there was nothing to go home to, so we decided to stay here."
She now works as the manager of Starbucks at the Kroger in Bryan and her husband is sous-chef at the College Station Hilton.
Willie Richards said the move changed his lifestyle for the better and gave him more focus.
"It's just been incredible, the people here, the support we got," he said. "We're living a stable life. We're trying to move forward, not move backwards."
The couple hopes to purchase their first home in the coming months. They beam at the thought of becoming homeowners.
Jung, no stranger to students and an avid collector and reader of books, found a part-time job at the Texas A&M bookstore.
Working there three or four days a week pays for most of his gasoline, he said. He's found other hobbies, though, like performing in the Navasota Theater and working out most days at Aggieland Fitness.
When he made his first trip back to his apartment three weeks after the storm, the National Guard was in charge and people weren't yet allowed to return to their homes.
"I was a nervous wreck. I had tried to get back into the city three times. But I knew some back roads and I'm good at talking people into things sometimes," he said. "I went back for my books. That's all I wanted."
The vibrant city he'd loved his entire life was now a foreign place.
Devastated. Vacant. Dead.
The streets were filled with rubble and the city was like a war zone, the Korean War veteran said.
His door was warped and he had to push hard to get inside, but his upstairs apartment kept his books out of harm's way.
"I talk about these books as though they were a human being. People lost relatives," he said. "There was so much real human tragedy and I'm worried about my books. But those books are who I am. They're more a part of me than anything else."
He loaded up all he could in a cargo van and headed back to College Station, where, he said, he was shown immeasurable generosity.
"What I found is in a time of crisis, people will open their hearts and doors and help people," he said. "There were a lot of ordinary people who stepped up to save and salvage others from disaster."
He's visited the city to see friends a few times and is planning another trip in September for a few weeks.
"They say once an Orleanian, always an Orleanian," he said. "Even if I'm not there, that city just stays with you no matter where you go or what you do."
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