Errol Perez&8217;s entire educational experience centered around St. Bernard High School in St. Bernard Parish. He attended and graduated from the school then turned around and taught there for 30 years.

This time last year he had just learned the names of a new brood of high school students taking his chemistry and physics classes.

At Joseph J. Davies Elementary across town, his wife Gloria wrapped up a week of testing new kindergartners with a Friday afternoon faculty meeting.

To Gloria that day seems like yesterday.

&8220;It has been like the blink of an eye,&8221; she said Friday.

&8220;We just don&8217;t know what happened,&8221; Errol said. &8220;Somebody helped carry us through.&8221;

The Perez couple &8212; now employed in Vidalia schools &8212; joined hundreds of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi residents who evacuated to the Miss-Lou after Hurricane Katrina.

They made a last minute decision to leave their Violet, La., home and stay with Gloria&8217;s uncle in Vidalia.

&8220;We were thinking, just like everyone else, we&8217;ll be back in three days,&8221; Errol said.

When that wasn&8217;t the case, the people of Concordia Parish came to the rescue, he said.

Both of Errol&8217;s parents are in need of special care, and he quickly found them a spot at a local nursing home. A contact at the nursing home offered the Perez couple a place to rent in Monterey. In less than a week, they&8217;d relocated out of Gloria&8217;s uncle&8217;s home into their own place.

First they worked as substitute teachers at Monterey High School, then Gloria got a full-time job as a reading interventionist at the school. In January, that job ended, but she stayed on part-time through the special education department. Errol got a job teaching half a day at Ferriday High School and half a day at Vidalia High School. His lunch break and planning period were consumed by the stretch of highway between the towns.

All the while, the people of the area were pitching in to help however possible, Errol said.

&8220;We had to start telling people &8216;no, you are doing too much,&8217;&8221; he said. &8220;We had a place and it was a safe place. We couldn&8217;t have fallen into a better place.&8221;

Errol went home to survey the damage less than a month after the storm. After the roads officially reopened, the couple went home every weekend to save what they could. Their home &8212; build on high ground &8212; had six feet of water. No home in their entire parish was inhabitable after the storm.

Despite the water, most of their losses were to looters, Errol said.

&8220;That&8217;s what makes you really mad,&8221; he said. &8220;The storm, that&8217;s an act of God, but when these people come and take sentimental things, that&8217;s wrong.&8221;

Still Errol and Gloria consider themselves lucky.

&8220;We lost things,&8221; Gloria said. &8220;But we never lost any members of our family, even the three cats.&8221;

&8220;The things we wanted floated,&8221; Errol said. &8220;It all went up and all landed level.&8221;

Gloria was able to salvage family photos, her daughter&8217;s wedding dress and collections of books &8212; all things in containers that floated.

The three family cats were each found at different times &8212; one six months after the storm. Two were starved, but all lived.

The St. Bernard schools have contacted the couple about returning to teach, but for now, the answer is no.

They haven&8217;t made decisions for the long term, but for at least another year, maybe two, Concordia Parish is home.

The house in St. Bernard has been gutted to the studs and closed up for safe-keeping. For the Perez couple the climate in the area just isn&8217;t worth it. Contractors are too hard to find, prices are too high and commutes are ridiculous, they said.

This school year they have more stable teaching jobs. Errol teaches chemistry and physics in his very own, brand new, classroom at Vidalia High School. Gloria has her own class of first-graders at Vidalia Lower.

And though some of the sentimental touches aren&8217;t there &8212; teaching a student whose parents they taught, or Errol having a high school student who was once in Gloria&8217;s kindergarten class &8212; the Vidalia schools are home enough, they said.

&8220;The students here have more manners and discipline,&8221; Errol said. &8220;It seems like the family unit up here is a lot stronger.&8221;

Besides, students are students, it&8217;s a love of teaching that calls them, no matter what the location, they said.

The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is Tuesday, but that&8217;s not something Errol has even thought about.

&8220;Somebody&8217;s got to tell me it&8217;s the one-year anniversary,&8221; he said. &8220;It&8217;s just a day.&8221;