07/27/2018
RSVP PARTNER HONORED!!
Senior Rides and More Volunteer honored by Houston Chronicle
Senior Rides and More volunteer, Laurel Murray, was honored in a full-page article in the Houston Chronicle’s “Heroes of Harvey” series Thursday, July 26th. Laurel rescued a blind Senior Rides care receiver stranded by flooding at the George Brown Convention Center and brought her into her home for several months.
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Volunteer, worried about a friend with disabilities, takes her in
By Amber Elliott
Retired nurse Laurel Murray stands near Godwin Park where feet of water inundated Meyerland homes during Harvey. Murray helped her friend Linda, who lived across from the park and who is blind, after her ... more
The Saturday before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, Senior Rides and More volunteer Laurel Murray gave one of her regulars, fellow Meyerland resident Linda Moores, a ride to JCPenney.
“There was a gap in the rain, so I picked Linda up and we went shopping,” said Murray, a retired nurse. She would often drive Moores — who is blind and diabetic and has had kidney and pancreas transplants — to get groceries or to her doctor’s appointments.
Murray, 71, slept through Sunday morning’s storms, but Moores, 63, awoke to ankle-deep water rising beneath her. She grabbed her medications, a change of clothes, her white cane and left home for the last time.
When Murray woke up, she couldn’t leave her block — but she was worried about Moores. “A neighbor with a pickup truck came over and said he could get to Kroger if he jumped on sidewalks.” A long line of flooded residents had gathered at the Kroger on South Post Oak waiting to get on the National Guard rescue vehicles. Murray walked along, asking if anyone had seen Linda. A woman had — Moores was headed to a shelter, she said.
Moores, too, had landed in a neighbor’s pickup truck; but after water flooded the engine, they had to abandon it. A couple loaded her into a raft with their two children, and they swam toward the grocery store, pulling the raft.
“We got on a dump truck and went to the George R. Brown Convention Center,” Moores said of the six-hour trek into downtown. “They ran out of food and water, and I got separated from my neighbors.” Her medications and cane were misplaced at the shelter, too.
Murray was desperately searching for her friend. She contacted Moores’ sister in Canada, who called her 24-year-old son in Houston. He went to the convention center and picked Moores up. By Tuesday, she was back in Meyerland at Murray’s home — and that’s where she stayed until December.
Murray salvaged what she could from Moore’s flooded home. She helped her with insurance and FEMA paperwork.
Ultimately, Moores decided to move to an assisted living facility in North Carolina. “I tried to rebuild and gave up,” Moores said of the house her parents built in 1952. “I lived there alone for four-and-a-half years.”
Murray misses her friend. “Linda had no family here and nowhere to go,” Murray said. “But before Harvey, she lived in the house she grew up in with minimal help and got along just fine. She’s a college grad and an intelligent woman with a wicked sense of humor.”
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