“He was planning on going back until the truck disappeared,” said C.C. Cambell-Rock in a kind of exasperated laughter. Her husband Raymond Rock, a carpenter, had his ’92 Ford Explorer stolen the morning of August 8 from the Safeway parking lot on Santa Rita Road. The truck contained most of his tools and moderately sized pieces of equipment.
The couple, who found refuge in Pleasanton in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was shocked to think that this could happen here. “I feel bad even talking about it,” Raymond Rock said. “The people here have been so great it’s almost like an epiphany … you’ve gone through all of this and you’ve finally reached a place where you feel safe. For something like this to happen, I really don’t even want to put it out there.”
Rock had left his carpentry tools in his truck when he went to get groceries and snacks for his trip to repair his residence in New Orleans. The truck contained mostly electronics, with some renovation and construction tools like a reciprocating saw and a table saw.
The government has told Katrina victims that if homes are not gutted-out and boarded-up by August 29, they will be declared blighted and abandoned. Rock went back last October for three months in order to meet those demands, but wanted to do more on this trip so that his family might one day return.
Cambell-Rock’s adult son Kelly Jones, of Pleasanton, had sent for her and his younger siblings after hearing about the catastrophe. The Rocks have a daughter, Amandi, 16, and a son, Jordan, 13. Yet, the road to California was not so easy when the family was split apart once disaster struck. Cambell-Rock and the children left before the hurricane hit and went to Kentwood, La. to stay with a close friend. “We stayed there for 10 days until I found where my husband was,” Cambell-Rock said. Rock stayed behind to “hold down the fort,” and was later sent to the Superdome and then to Tennessee.
The family finally ended up in Pleasanton, where they’ve lived for the past year, and has been very fortunate to receive so much support.
“My son went to the Pleasanton City Council just to see where the resources were for aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina,” Cambell-Rock said. Shortly there after, someone graciously donated an apartment for the family to live in for free, Rock mentioned, in hopes that they might get their lives back in order.
With the year anniversary approaching on August 29, 2006, it is the victims of Hurricane Katrina that we must remember for having made Pleasanton their safe haven. Officer Julie Fragomeli, of the Pleasanton Police Department, was the officer on call when the stolen truck was reported.
“It wasn’t like there was a million dollars worth of things in the back of his car,” Fragomeli said, “but he just kept saying that this is Pleasanton, it’s beautiful, it’s wonderful; it’s not supposed to happen in Pleasanton.”
However, Fragomeli was astonished at the Rocks’ optimism, mentioning that while the Rocks might not have accepted the fact that their truck got stolen in such a town, they were in awe at the compassion of the people within it.
“I’ve been doing this for nine years now,” Fragomeli said. “This is the first time, while there have been other smaller occasions, you find that you’ve been kind of touched by somebody’s situation,” she added. “They didn’t even ask for help.”
The couple remains positive, currently researching permit requirements in order to stay in the construction business when they return to New Orleans. They are, above all, thankful they have their lives, regardless of what has happened. Cambell-Rock said, “We lost everything, but we gained a new community, new friends, and a new beginning.”
