HURRICANE KATRINA: ONE YEAR LATER TRANSPLANTS FIND NEW LIVES AFTER DEADLY STORM.

Byline: BRENT HOPKINS Staff Writer

Jazz photographer Herman Leonard didn't think the hurricane would be anything to worry about, but packed away his life's work, just in case.

Right before Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city they loved, the photographer climbed into a minivan with his family and fled New Orleans. They took family pictures and jewelry, medical records and four days worth of clothes.

As the storm clouds sped toward the Gulf Coast, Rich Weinroth waited to buy gasoline and tried to find a way to help. The vagabond cook from Calabasas got as much fuel as he could and waited, fearing the worst.

In the past year, the Leonards escaped the nightmare of New Orleans and learned to live in Los Angeles. Weinroth traded the aimless, carefree life of vacation to spend his days cooking for thousands and living in desolation. Their lives run in parallel, opposite directions, never intersecting but connected by the same storm that smashed into the gulf a year ago today.

``I haven't got a house, I haven't got my friends, I haven't got the places (where) I used to hang out,'' said Leonard, 83, now living in Studio City. ``I've lived all over the world, but I never found a place like New Orleans.''

The same goes for Weinroth, who cashed out of the Red Devil Pizzeria in Woodland Hills a year ago to take a rambling trip across the country with a 22-foot motor home and a pit bull-mix named Bob.

``The attitude, the optimism, the sense of social responsibility makes it one of the best places I've ever been in America,'' said Weinroth, 39, now living at a soup kitchen in Plaquemines Parish. ``The stop in New Orleans was the best part of my trip. I had a great time driving around and meeting people, but the people I volunteered with are heroes, there's no other way to say it.''

Before the storm upended their lives, Leonard shot magazine assignments and took portraits; Weinroth bummed around the country and learned about new kinds of cuisine.

Leonard lived on Lake Pontchartrain and survived four previous hurricanes in his 15 years as a resident of the Crescent City. They seemed manageable -- he thought he might lose a tree or get some light flood damage from the rain. Though he wasn't terribly worried, he loaded his archives into a fifth-floor museum vault on the Saturday before the storm hit.

Then he drove all night on a choked freeway for Houston with his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, thinking they'd stay a few days then head back home. After a tense two nights, the family began to relax. The storm had come and gone, and their lakeview homes seemed like they'd dodged the worst.

``We turned the news on Tuesday and we were in a better mood,'' said Shana Leonard, Herman's 33-year-old daughter. ``Then the crap hit the fan.''

Herman's home, a block and a half from the lake and right next to the 17th Street Canal, was under water up to the second floor. Shana's place, three minutes away, got it even worse. Their things, a cat and their lives all washed away.

The Leonards are not a typical family. In his days shooting jazz, Herman played backgammon with Dizzy Gillespie and hung out with Billie Holiday. Shana grew up all over the world, her husband, Steve, makes a living as a videographer, taping legal depositions across the globe, and their daughter, India, 10, is severely handicapped and requires full-time care.

Shana had moved back just a few months before to be closer to her father; they thought their house would be OK as long as they locked it up. As they ran out, Shana popped the door to the attic to allow their five cats a place to sleep. Only four made it up.

So grandfather, daughter and granddaughter flew to Los Angeles, a place where they had friends, while Steve drove the minivan the rest of the way. They spent six weeks on couches and in spare bedrooms. New Orleans, with its hospitals knocked askew and services out, was no longer a viable option.

They lost their homes and possessions, with Herman's priceless, signed prints destroyed in the deluge. They turned to Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles for assistance and got an amazing outpouring of help. Soon, they had a rented house in a quiet neighborhood and rooms full of donated furniture.

And they were not alone in their plight. No hard statistics exist on the number of Gulf Coast residents pushed to Los Angeles by the storm. No one knows for certain how many stayed and how many returned. The American Red Cross of Greater Los Angeles reports that it helped 5,000 people throughout the county, while Jewish Family Service handled 160 heads of household. Some needed money, some needed housing, some just needed someone to listen.

``It wasn't just one or two calls a day, it was 15 a day all the way until Christmas,'' said Kristee Benedetto, a licensed clinical social worker who ran the JFS efforts. ``It was really hard, because I met with everyone face to face at least once. I heard things where I couldn't even sleep at night, because this was the first time they could grieve.''

These are the stories Weinroth saw firsthand. Family concerns and other travel issues kept him out of the wrecked city until February, but when he arrived, the destruction shocked him.

``I saw it was devastated -- houses on top of cars, houses on top of houses, addresses spray-painted on the front of houses because they'd been ripped off their foundation,'' he said. ``As soon as you drove across the canal, you could just smell the mold growing.''

And so he showed up at the Emergency Communities kitchen in St. Bernard Parish, offering his services. The first day, he washed dishes. The second, he chopped vegetables. On the third, he was running the kitchen.

For the past six months, Weinroth has worked as one of the program's coordinators, overseeing 2,000 meals a day. Using donated canned vegetables and frozen meat, the volunteers made good meals for washed-out residents, relief workers and anyone else who wanted something hot.

Now, he's hoping to return to L.A. to help coordinate ongoing volunteer efforts. While things have improved somewhat, he still sees a tremendous need for supplies and manpower to keep the relief project under way.

``It's the best job I've ever had,'' he said. ``It's going to take a long time to fix this. They need volunteers and money and they'll need them for a long time. These people need the FEMA trailers, but what they really need is their houses.''

And Herman Leonard's back working again, too. He once derided L.A. as having ``less culture than yogurt'' and now loves his new home. Knee surgery slowed him a little, but he's shooting again and using his classic jazz photos to raise money for the cleanup.

His house by the lake sits empty, and he'll never move back to New Orleans, but he's found a new way to get by.

``This is another period of my life,'' he said. ``I'll get through this, I'll survive. I was terribly sad, but I knew I'd make it.''

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Shana Leonard and her father, Herman Leonard, now live in Studio City, where he is working on a photography book.

(2) Photographer Herman Leonard goes over his photographs of famous musicians in Studio City, after being transplanted to California from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer