Thursday, September 1, 2005. Mid-day.

My first goal was to find the missing people and, hopefully, then the buses too. My best shot was the Holiday Inn, and as I briskly moved towards it, the sole of my left sandal peeled back several inches and began to flop. Normally, that would be no big deal, but today, I needed shoes.

When I got to the Holiday Inn corner, a half-dozen young mothers were standing and tending to their kids. I asked them if there was anyone at the hotel. The answer was "no." I realized then that I had no option but to go check out the convention center.

When I asked for directions, one of the women said, "We're going down there sir if you'd like to walk with us. Her kindness stood in marked contrast to the chaos.

"That would be great," I said.

I stood there a few minutes, and the longer I stood and thought about the morning, the greater my urgency was to move on. Walking with this group would only slow me down. Despite their kindness, I told them I was going to go on.

I walked a couple of blocks and then cut over to Canal St., where I came upon two guys loading their car. Awkward, I approached them. "Are you guys leaving town?" I asked.

"Yea, we are," one said as he put another bag in the car.

"Well, I need a ride. Do you guys have room for one more? I asked anxiously.

"I don't really think so. We've got a lot more stuff to pack and there's barely room for the two of us," he said without looking at me.

"Okay, can you tell me how to get to the convention center?" I asked.

"Well, you go up Canal Street to the Casino and turn right, but if I were you I wouldn't go down there," he replied.

"Why not?" I asked.

"There's some bad shit going on down there." I turned and headed up Canal.

I felt driven to see if the convention center held anything for me. The further I walked, the heavier my bags felt, so I stopped to see if there was anything I could throw out. After rummaging through my clothes and catching my breath, I decided that it wasn't quite yet time to throw things away.

The only other time that I've felt that same urge to throw things away to survive was when my seven-year-old daughter, Kaitlin, and I nearly drowned on a family vacation in Kauai. We had gone snorkeling and had been pulled too far out by the undercurrent. When I realized our situation I put Kaitlin on my back and started swimming for shore. I had an underwater camera on one arm, and my mask and snorkel on the other. The more I swam, the more the current pulled against us. I could feel the camera holding us back, so I let that go. Next, I threw off the mask and snorkel. We finally made it to shore, but not before I felt that our survival was in doubt. I felt that same way now.

I zipped my bag and started walking when I looked over and noticed a large ABC News satellite truck parked on the streetcar tracks in the middle of Canal. I hustled over to it. "Do you know where the CBS crews are?" I asked, now out of breath.

"I haven't seen them, but they might be down towards Bourbon," he said. I began walking down the line of news trucks that stretched for several blocks. When I encountered trucks that weren't marked, I would stop and ask if they were CBS. No luck.

As I approached Bourbon, I came upon a group of CBS vehicles with four guys talking in front of them. I introduced myself. "My name is Dr. Greg Ketchum. I'm the CBS 5 Workplace and Career Expert for the San Francisco CBS affiliate. I've been stuck in New Orleans for a week now and need a ride out. Are you guys leaving today?"

"Yea, we're leaving in about half an hour because it's too dangerous to be down here," said one of them.

"Could you take me with you?" I asked.

A young guy, who looked to be "on-camera talent" said, "Well, we really don't have that much room. I'm even going to have to ride in the satellite truck myself. We might have room in there, but I really don't know for sure." My stomach tightened.

What seemed like minutes passed before a guy behind me said, "I've got room in my van. You can ride with me, but we're only going to Kenner, which is about ten miles away."

"Hey, I don't care where you're going. I've got to get out of here," I told him. If he had told me I was to ride on the luggage rack of his van, I’d have done it.

I set my bags down. Jim Krasula, a national correspondent for CBS Radio Network, based in Charlotte, N.C., was the one who offered me the ride. As I stood there letting the relief start to sink in, I wondered, could I really trust this? What could I do to boost the chance that they'd actually take me?

I decided to pursue a strategy to make them connect to me as an individual, instead of seeing me as just some guy off the street: I would become a "super-networker." I went up to each person and introduced myself, showed them pictures of my children, and asked about their families and where they were from. The more I met, the more secure I began to feel.

After making the rounds of introductions, I saw an unfamiliar guy walk up to the group and announce, "We just got a call from Bob, a V.P. at a CBS affiliate station. He says he has three elderly relatives stuck at the convention center and he wants us to get them and drive them out of New Orleans." If they did that, guess who was low man on that totem pole?

While Jim was packing his van, the group began to debate whether they could meet his request. "It's pretty dangerous to go down there," said one.

"How in the world would we know who they are and be able to find them in that crowd?" asked another. The young "on camera talent" spoke up.

"Are we sure that these are Bob's relatives and not just some friends of his? That would be just like him to try to get us to go down there with a bullshit story about his old relatives," he said. If I was going to get tossed out it would be this guy, I decided.

While they were having this discussion I quickly hatched another plan: figuring it would be harder for them to throw me out of the car than it would be to prevent me from getting in, I picked up my bags and quietly set them inside the back of Jim's van. No one noticed.

I walked back over to hear the end of the discussion about the relatives. Led by the young guy, they had come to a consensus: if the old folks could make their own way from the convention center to us in the next fifteen minutes, they could come along. I knew that meant I was probably safe. Even if they could somehow get word to them to come on down, the walk itself was longer than that. It was a faux solution.

I felt bad for the folks, but realistically, there was just no way. If they drove down to the convention center people wanting food, water or a ride would mob them. Besides, it was too dangerous.

The New Orleans Police were out on the street guarding the news crews. From time to time a truck from Wildlife and Fisheries would drive by pulling a boat loaded with a half-dozen fully armed, flak-jacket-helmet-and-goggle-wearing-military-style-police-officers. They looked edgy and ridiculous, but I knew they meant business.

We were about ten minutes from leaving when I looked up Canal Street toward the convention center and saw the four people from the Holiday Inn who had been next to me in the bus line. I now realized there had been no buses. I felt immediate relief.

I ran to meet them and they recognized me. "What the hell happened this morning?" I asked.

"Well, the hotel told us they were out of food and water and that there was no place else for us to go but the convention center," one of the men said.

"Where are you going then?" I asked, as they were walking away from the center.

"We walked down and took a look and there's no way in hell we're going to stay there." Next came the question that I hoped they wouldn't ask: "What are you going to do?"

What am I going to do? What am I going to do? It was two questions: what was I going to tell them I was going to do, versus what I was actually going to do.

I don't know how long I paused. If I told them I had a ride I knew that they’d beg me to take them too. That's what I would have done. If I told the CBS guys that I now had four friends with their luggage who wanted a ride too, I was afraid they would call the whole thing off. They could have rightly said they didn't have the room, and it wouldn't be fair just to take one person. I hesitated, mulling over this moral dilemma.

"I'm just going to hang out with these guys for awhile," I finally said. "What are ya'll going to do?"

"We have no place to go," one of the women said.

"Well, the back door of the hotel is jammed part-way open and you can get in there. That's your best shot," I said, trying to help them in a way that I could.

"Good luck," they said.

"Good luck to you as well," I said. And with that, they walked off towards the hotel.

I couldn't believe what I had just done, but I knew it was the only way. I made a decision to boost the odds of my own survival when I might have been able to help someone else. I didn't even know them. Still, it was one of those decisions that I would revisit, over and over again.

Finally, it was time to leave. I started to get into the back of the van and ride in the cargo space, when Jim motioned for me to come and sit in the seat behind him. I moved up, but didn't want to make any move that might have him change his mind. Whether I got out of New Orleans today was, at this moment, totally up to Jim. I felt like a child.

Traveling with Jim was Cami McCormick, another CBS Radio correspondent, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. Just before starting the van, Jim offered me a beer and some trail mix. "Thank you all-powerful father," I thought.

The caravan of five CBS vehicles, with a New Orleans Police cruiser at either end, pulled out for Kenner. I had no idea where that was, nor how far away, but it was out of New Orleans.

Our route took us down towards the convention center, but we turned by the Doubletree Hotel, a couple blocks before it. As we made that turn I spied the first National Guard troops in full battle gear, M-16's at the ready. Their steel cold expressions combined with the positions they had taken around the hotel, told me they were protecting themselves, not us.

It started to rain. We passed many people including an old man, in terrible shape, pushing an old woman in a wheelchair through the rain toward the convention center. We drove on.

We drove up the on-ramps to the bridge that crosses the Mississippi leading to the "West Bank." Hundreds of people found shelter from the rain under the overpass amidst tons of trash. Others were going up the on-ramps, hoping to walk across the bridge. We passed a small pick-up with perhaps fifteen people standing up in the bed, whipped around by the wind and rain. One man was shirtless.

At mid-span, I was now officially out of New Orleans. I was headed for Kenner, not knowing if I had just jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. I didn't care.