"All I've wanted in the last five years was to become a productive part of this city," Quasney, 65, said. "I don't want to be a burden on anyone."
Still, hers hasn't been an easy journey. Thinking back to the early days after the storm, when help failed to come to the Gulf Coast, she said, "Why were we abandoned like this?"
She could just as easily have been talking about her current situation.
Lingering nightmares
Quasney was born in Pennsylvania but spent much of her childhood in New Orleans, her mother's hometown. Philadelphia, she said, always felt safe to her - "No hurricanes, no tornados." She came north for college, graduating from Temple University in 1967 with a degree in business, then returned to Louisiana.
In August 2005, she was working as a manager at a fast-food restaurant and renting a home in New Orleans' Lakeview neighborhood. She decided to ride out the storm for two reasons: Her car was giving her trouble and her boss had told her that she needed to stay to open the restaurant the next day.
"I still wake up almost every night with nightmares," she said.
She remembers the incredible silence after Katrina passed through, with the city dark and the stars seemingly brighter.
"It just comes over you that there's absolutely no life," she said.
The levee near her house broke in the hours after the storm had passed. As the water rose around her, she put her work briefcase and a bag with a few changes of clothing in a recycling bucket. She pinned $300 to her bra.
Then she entered the water. It was up to her armpits. As she sloshed through the current, a trash can struck her face with such force it knocked out her partial denture and six of her teeth.
