Dorothy, 54, once worked as a deputy sheriff in New Orleans and also worked for the New Orleans parish school board. Dorothy sits out the hurricane at her boyfriend Adam's house. She has grown up in New Orleans and knows the hurricane mentality well — it either turns or you sit and wait it out, rather than getting caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. She is at Adam's house on Monday morning and the phones are working, the sun is shining. Then the weather takes a turn for the worse. The storm sounds like an "18-wheeler truck crashing." After the storm subsides, Dorothy looks out the window and notices that water is coming up the curb. She opens the door and steps out into the street and the water comes up to her knees. Dorothy turns to Adam and tells him that they "gotta get the hell out of here!" She sees some looting as she makes her way through the floodwaters down the street. They make their way up to higher ground and are taken to the Superdome by police officers.

Arriving in the Superdome Monday afternoon, the conditions are fine. It is not too crowded and the bathrooms are working. Dorothy is worried, however. Right after the storm she called her daughter and her grandkids and they were begging for help as their house was flooding, and then the line went dead. On Tuesday, rumors of rapes and violence circulate and the sanitation rapidly deteriorates. She sees a woman go into labor and is caught in a stampede. She describes the smell as being worse than the smell of rotting bodies. Her nightmare continues as she waits in line for the buses, being pushed and crushed while the National Guard point their guns at the crowd, screaming at them to get back. Eventually she gets on a bus with Adam on Friday and goes to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. Dorothy is angry and feels betrayed by a country she believed in, feeling like she and her community were abandoned and treated like slaves.

Since the Hurricane: Dorothy is now living in Houston, where she intends to stay for the foreseeable future. Dorothy was a member of the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association and has now set up her own campaign group.