Five years ago, Katrina turned life in New Orleans upside down.

More than a few got right-side up in the Valley, turning to relatives and friends to help them regain their footing.

Many marveled at the generosity and compassion they were shown upon arriving here. And many talked of the unimaginable: returning to New Orleans.

And yet, that's where The Bee found a half-dozen of them this past week, Louisianans (and one transplanted Fresnan) who are home again for better or for worse.

Here are their stories.

Longing for Fresno

Calvin and Nicole Thomas grabbed a few clothes and fled their flood-ravaged New Orleans neighborhood for refuge with relatives in Fresno.

The couple returned in April 2006. Now divorced and plagued by job and health woes, they both yearn for what might have been if they had stayed in Fresno.

"I don't even like talking about it," says Nicole, who now uses her maiden name, Nicole Charlot. "My daughter is the only positive."

Nicole, 29, was pregnant with Thai Li Z'Miracle Thomas when she and Calvin arrived in Fresno to stay in an apartment with Calvin's cousins Khadijah and Zakiyyah Abdul-Mateen.

Nurses organized a baby shower on Oct. 27, 2005, in the waiting room of the Women's Health Center at then-University Medical Center.

While they were in Fresno, Calvin, a union carpenter, got a construction job and worked part-time at a raisin factory. Nicole stayed home with Thai Li.

Fresno was "awesome," Calvin says. "I had a great time. It was nice, clean, friendly." Nicole also liked Fresno -- but she was lonely. She missed her family.

So they went home -- to an apartment that was looted, windows broken and doors off their hinges, Calvin says. Dogs had been inside, and the floor was littered with feces, Nicole says.

Calvin, 28, began to show signs of stress. Symptoms of sickle cell anemia, a blood disease, resurfaced after being in check for several years. He no longer can do carpentry work, and is unemployed.

"I wish I hadn't come back," Calvin says.

Nicole went to school to be a medical assistant, but she hasn't found work in the field. Instead, she has a lower-paying home-care job. "I'm about to move in with one of my friends, because I can't afford my rent," she says.

Thai Li is in school, and Nicole says it would be easier to live apart from her family. Someday, she would like to return to Fresno.

Calvin hopes to get a degree in computer drafting design, and then he, too, wants to leave New Orleans, most likely to live again in Fresno. "I would just like a new start away from home, like I did before."

-- Barbara Anderson

Beautiful music

When the house he was renting filled with 16 feet of water, Loren Pickford figured it was time to head back to Fresno.

Pickford, a jazz musician and Fresno native, had lived in New Orleans since 1991.

He never made it to Fresno. He only got as far as Kansas City before his car broke down. So for the next four years, he and his wife stayed there.

At the time, in Fresno, local musicians held a benefit concert in his honor. The money raised helped him get back on his feet.

"We lost all of our personal possessions," Pickford says. "I don't complain because I have so many friends who lost more. I had a friend -- six of her 10 children drowned. You can't complain about stuff when you know so many people who lost their people."

It wasn't until this year that Pickford finally went "home" -- and by that he means New Orleans. But he wouldn't have made it without more help from his Fresno connection.