For the people who went through Katrina, the memories of the week before the storm seem to be burned in our brains. We remember every tiny detail. It’s probably because even in the chaotic days after, it was already obvious that everything we did before, everything we knew before, would never be the same. I know people who remember what they were wearing three days before the storm, who they ran into in the grocery store, the last neighbor they talked to, last restaurant they ate at, or what they were watching on TV the night before they woke up to Cat 5 headed straight for us.
Personally, when I think of the week before Katrina, I often think of the FBI.
It’s not really that random. For two years prior I was working part-time on a master’s degree in political science, and had just finished it up in December 2004. On the side, I was practicing martial arts, studying foreign languages, reading up on terrorist strategies, international events, and criminal psychology, and happily perfecting my aim at paper targets with my handguns. This was my career path – federal law enforcement. And I was in prep mode. During the entire spring and summer of 2005 I was in the application and interview process with several government agencies ranging from the US Secret Service, FBI, ATF, DEA, CIA, US Foreign Service, and others. I’d ruled a few out early on, and knew who my top choices were. The FBI was one of my least favorites, but I didn’t rule it out completely even though I was almost finished the interview process with my favorite agencies. I decided to take the entrance exam anyway, and walked into the FBI headquarters on the Lakefront at 8am on Wednesday, August 24, 2005. Five years ago, tomorrow morning. And I remember what I was wearing.
I had to juggle my work schedule a bit to take off. I was working as an assignment editor at a local New Orleans TV news station to pass the time while enduring the federal application process. Not much was going on. The night before, I knew that there was a tropical depression just east of the Bahamas, and it was expected to become a tropical storm to be named “Katrina” by the next morning. But I didn’t even check to see when I woke up. It wasn’t a threat to us. It was going to southern Florida. And I was busy with more important things… and I’d be leaving New Orleans soon.
I knew the moment I walked in the FBI building that I didn’t belong there. No room for bending the rules or having a sense of humor. Definitely not me. Some of the other agencies I interviewed with had a wonderful camaraderie, surprisingly, and I was sure I wanted to work for those instead. But I took the FBI test anyway. I was already there; why not. A walk through some cold concrete hallways, a few hours in a sterile windowless room, a few disinterested pencil strokes later, and I was out of there. And I couldn’t remember ever being happier to feel the brutal August sun, heat and humidity punch me when I walked out the front door.
After the test I went to to the TV station and scheduled assignments for the reporters/photographers for the next two days. It was a mostly normal batch of news stories for Thursday and Friday, outside of the Well, this seems to be a busy tropical year. We’re almost on letter K! sentiment. That tropical depression wound up becoming a small hurricane and clipping Florida, but it still wasn’t a threat to anyone else in particular yet. We knew it was drifting towards the Gulf though, so I checked in to see what the radar looked like when I left to go bar hopping downtown that Friday night. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to get up early and go to the newsroom! But it was still a Cat 1 hovering off southern Florida. So I was off to celebrate the end of those awful federal tests, and the likelihood of an incredible new career.
I still don’t know how I scored on the FBI test. If they sent me the scores in the mail then they were likely another Katrina casualty. I didn’t bother calling them either. Because by then I didn’t care anymore. Two days after Katrina (exactly one week after I took the test) I was watching TV in a relative’s living room in Houston, and saw aerial video of the New Orleans Lakefront – and there was the intimidating FBI headquarters, humbled beneath the water like everything else.
About three weeks later I was gutting my parents’ home in Arabi. I got a call on my cell phone from a Virginia area code. I had rubber gloves on covered in black sludge so I let it go to voicemail. When I broke for my MRE lunch later on, I checked the message. It was from a certain clandestine agency that I’d already done a few interviews with, and they were my first choice. Were. They asked me if I was still interested in the job, and left me some contact info.
I never called them back.
Image: A military C-130 plane passes by the Lakefront Airport as it sprays pesticide September 13, 2005 over parts of New Orleans, LA. -LIFE Magazine
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Nice post. The Big K changed a lot of people’s lives. My daughter was at Tulane at the time, and was exiled.
Working for clandestine federal agencies is way overrated.
Thanks. I think they’re overrated too. If things had played out I’d probably still have wound up back here. I’d have given myself 2 years tops ;)
Great post. It’s funny how we remember the little, intimate details of what we were doing right before the storm hit. While it’s true that, we are all changed because of the storm…I just want to make sure that, I’m forever a better person because of it.
When we were gutting out, the Red Cross van came in the neighborhood to feed us. We were hungry and there was absolutely nothing open in our area.
That was the best sandwich, I’d ever eaten. :)
So who did you end up working for?
Initially some international arms dealers, but now I’m a mercenary ;-)
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