After Teens Were Displaced by Katrina, a Stranger Helped Them with Prom (Exclusive)

Two women who were in high school during Hurricane Katrina are opening up about how the kindness of a complete stranger helped make their prom feel like a normal school dance.

Twenty years ago, the catastrophic hurricane killed over 1,300 people and displaced over a million across the Gulf Coast, including Ryan LeFrere, then a high school student.

When her senior prom rolled around nine months later, nearly 75% of her classmates at Cabrini High School were affected by Katrina. “It was smaller,” LeFrere, now 37, tells PEOPLE of the celebration they ended up having. “Not too many people came back,” but she says that it was still a “good time.”

LeFrere and other teens were even featured in the pages of Teen PEOPLE, celebrating the traditional teenage milestone even as visible reminders of the tragedy remained inescapable. 

“They made us forget that that year was so terrible,” says classmate Hannah Foret. “They definitely made it memorable for us.”

But it was the generosity of Marisa West, a then-high school senior from Maryland, that continues to resonate with LeFrere. West collected thousands of prom dresses for girls living along the Gulf Coast — and LeFere wore one of her dresses that night.

“It was very sweet that someone that didn’t know us or experience what we’d been through cared enough to do something,” she adds.

The unique attention was also a thrill to Foret, a junior who wore her own dress.

“I remember when they asked me, I was very surprised because, as I said, ‘I’m a very introverted person. I was not involved in a lot of clubs at Cabrini,’ ” Foret says. “It was really cool to be picked.”

It’s “crazy” for LeFrere to believe it’s already been 20 years since Katrina. She still remembers packing up and evacuating two days before the hurricane made landfall near the Louisiana and Mississippi border on Aug. 29, 2005. 

“I remember taking all of my pictures off the window, because I had a higher window,” she says. “I put them all on my bed. My bed actually ended up floating due to the water that went into the house. And my pictures were still on my bed, but they were all ruined.”

When Katrina hit, Foret and her family were living in a rental home because a tornado had damaged her childhood home months earlier. Then they evacuated to a church in southern Louisiana.

“We lost our possessions that we were storing at other people’s houses because their houses flooded,” says the legal assistant and married mom of three.

Her family ended up moving to the Baton Rouge area, living in her aunt’s trailer for about two months. For Foret, 36, even though she never went back permanently, it wasn’t until Cabrini reopened that life felt “somewhat normal” again.

Now living in Houma — just over 50 miles from New Orleans — Foret says that, despite the devastation, something wonderful came out of the aftermath of the storm: her family.

“My husband, who I ended up marrying, is from this area, so it’s kind of crazy to think had Katrina not happened, I wouldn’t have met who I married to,” she adds. “I wouldn’t have these kids.”

LeFrere, who lives in Houston with her wife and newborn son, also believes that the storm changed the trajectory of her life. She doesn’t think about Katrina as much as she used to, but says, “when I watch things or the date comes around, then of course, Facebook floods your timeline with all your memories.”

“You have to be resilient, because if not, you’ll break down every day,” LeFrere says. “The place that you grew up in, you love, the city that you love, the city that helped to build you and mold you, it’s never the same.”