Strangers' Quest Leads Mom To Kids

The mountains of Utah are a long way from Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.

But, reports Hattie Kauffman, that's where evacuee Kathy Phipps came in contact with strangers whose kindness would change her life forever.

"We get off the plane," Phipps told Kauffman, "and there were these wonderful people hollering, 'Welcome to Utah.' "

"Utah! How in the world am I going to find my kids in Utah?" Phipps remembers wondering.

She is one of several hundred evacuees in Utah, but was separated from her two young children the night the hurricane hit.

After nearly drowning, Phipps wound up in the chaos of the New Orleans convention center.

"I couldn't get back to the kids," she says. "I didn't know where they were."

Her luck changed when she met Barbara and Jim Williams.

"She was trembling," Barbara says. "She never quit shaking from the moment she got off the airplane."

Barbara and Jim made finding Phipps' kids their mission, Kauffman says. They worked the phones, and managed a miracle.

Out of the thousands displaced, they tracked down Phipps' children at the convention center in Austin, Texas.

At last, mom and kids reunited over the phone.

"Hey baby. What are you doing?" Phipps says, tears streaming down her face. "I'm in Utah. It's beautiful. I'm coming to get you all.

"Don't cry," she says. "Mama's right here. I'm safe. I'm alive. I'm not dead. You still eating a lot, aren't you? You getting bigger, ain't you ? Oh, my baby!"

Phipps and Barbara embraced tightly.

These strangers weren't working for an aid agency. They helped out of the goodness of their hearts.

"There's no way I can thank them," Phipps says. "I'm gonna try, though."

Kathy's reunion with her kids could come in the next couple of days.

She plans on settling in Utah, Kauffman says, and won't be moving back to Louisiana.