By Lorenzo Salinas

l.v.salinas@panews.com

 

While Harvey tore many families apart, there were those who worked to bring them back together, too.

Danielle Pardue, Marsha Worthy, Kristen Watkins and Tracy Ivy reunited two children with their father after the floods that Harvey  brought separated the family. Through a spirit of teamwork, community and the special love parents have for children, the four women were able to weather a storm of uncertainty and realize a calm horizon of a family come together in the end.

“We all kind of played a small part in it,” Pardue, Marketing and Communications Manager for CHRISTUS, said.

During the storm, CHRISTUS staff ran a communications command center where media and the community could receive status updates on the services available at the hospital.

“We just want to make sure everyone knows what’s available,” Pardue said.

This is also when she and the other women learned of a family in need.

“I got a phone call from someone else working at the main command center,” Pardue said. “Marsha Worthy. She’s our HR manager. She contacted me and explained they had these two children who were rescued from their home in Port Arthur and somehow got separated from their father.”

Later Marsha would find out the family was separated during a helicopter rescue after the father began hyperventilating as he prepared for the rescue. As a consequence, he had to stay behind and watch his children get rescued without him.

The two children, a boy and girl, were brought to St. Mary’s Hospital not because they were injured but because emergency staff thought it would be the best place for them until they could find their father.

“(Marsha) asked me if there was anything we could do to try to get these kids’ photos out there,” Pardue said. “So maybe somebody would recognize them and contact their dad.”

After checking with the office and getting the legal approval to do so, Pardue posted the children’s photographs on the CHRISTUS Facebook page and shared their information with their media partners. Almost immediately, Pardue and Worthy were getting responses from those wanting to help.

“They were so instrumental in helping us reunite them with their family,” Pardue said of their media partners and the community that responded. “It spread like wildfire.”

Pardue and Worthy fielded the flood of phone calls that soon followed.

“I was talking to various people in the community who knew their family and knew their father. We even had various comments on Facebook from teachers who knew them,” Pardue said.

“Once I got some good contact info, I passed those phone numbers back to Marsha. She helped me make those phone calls to see if they were a good number to reach their father at.”

Meanwhile, the administrator of St. Mary’s, Watkins, spent her time making sure the children were alright and didn’t get too lonely.

“Kristen was with the kids the entire day,” Pardue said. “She never left their side.”

Later on, according to Pardue, a respiratory therapist (Ivy) came in and helped relieve Watkins of some babysitting duties.

“Someone told me the father had been going from shelter to shelter looking for his children,” Pardue said. “They got rescued by the Coast Guard in a helicopter. They put the kids in first; and, when they went to put him in the basket, he didn’t feel comfortable. He started hyperventilating.”

The father had to wait for another form of rescue—a boat—to pick him up. He and his children were separated as a result.

“Marsha started making phone calls and reached him through a community member,” Pardue said. “She called me back and I found him—he was at a local hotel that was sheltering some folks; so, we knew where he was and where his kids were.”

Pardue said that the father had no means of transportation to get from the hotel to the hospital, so she had to figure out a way to bring them back together.

“I started thinking to myself, ‘How could I get this man to his children?’”

She mentioned she had friends in law enforcement, but didn’t want to ask them to stop the important work they were doing just to help her.

“Then I thought, ‘I’m just sitting here. I’m working in a command center. I have a car. I could just go get him myself.’”

Pardue said she got her husband to go with her, and they figured out a safe and water-free way to get from the hospital to the hotel and back.

“I called (the father) and told him to stay where he was. We picked him up at the hotel and took the road back to St. Mary’s,” Pardue said. “We got the kids reunited with him and brought all three of them back to the hotel where he was staying.”

Pardue said the reunion was touching.

“The two kids were very different,” she said. “The little girl—she was very high energy, very outgoing and very talkative. The older son—he was very shy, reserved and very calm.

“Whenever we pulled up (with their father), she ran and jumped into his arms. The son kind of hugged him. He didn’t say much, but you could tell they were both very happy.”

As for Pardue, she said the adventure affected her especially as a parent.

“I’m a mom. I have three kids myself; and I can’t even imagine being in a situation where I’m separated from my children. I can’t imagine what that must feel like. … That was what was really driving me that day,” she said.

“It really hit home for me. I knew that was the most important thing to focus on that day. I knew as a parent it was important. I just knew there was a reason for my involvement because I could relate as a parent.”

And when she saw the father embrace his children, she knew it was the right thing.

“He gave them a big hug. That’s just what a parent does—you want to see a family together.”