ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Cornelius Lucas came home from his new high school in August, 2005, went to his room and cried.

The 14-year-old cried for New Orleans, the city he left weeks earlier and that was then being devastated by Hurricane Katrina. He cried for his home and the devastation he couldn't turn away from. He cried because his family, including his older sister, Letress, was still in the city while he was in Georgia.

Letress, Lucas' grandparents, Allen Thomas and Letress Washington, his aunt and other family members were in the flooded east bank. Lucas and his mother, Priscilla Jones, had not heard from them.

"Every TV in the house had CNN on, all that," said Lucas, now a Detroit Lions offensive tackle. "[My mom] was freaking out about every single thing. Then being her son, you want to help her and get involved. All of that, it was real emotional."

Lucas had moved with his mother, step-father Abe Jones Jr., and younger sister from New Orleans to Lithia Springs, Georgia, for Abe to find work as an electrician.

Abe and Priscilla filled a truck with clothes, personal papers and a TV, planning to return later for their car and the rest of their belongings. Cornelius and his younger sister, Abryanne Jones, arrived a couple of weeks later.

Less than a month later, everything washed away. Beds, dressers, televisions, the car. All gone.

"Lost a lot of baby pictures. That's probably what I'm most mad about," Cornelius Lucas said. "My grandmother had a lot of baby pictures of us and can't get those back."

When the storm hit, Lucas was more concerned about family, especially when Priscilla phoned her mother's place of employment near the convention center and was told her family wasn't there. It was their likely safe haven.

They had gone to their aunt's high-rise on the east side instead.

Letress stayed with her grandparents when the rest of her immediate family moved. An adult, she worked as a loss prevention officer at Wal-Mart.

She had been with her extended family at the storm's outset, leaving her truck in a French Quarter parking garage -- a higher and theoretically safer location -- before heading to her great aunt's high-rise apartment on the east side of the city, not far from Lake Ponchartrain.

Cornelius Lucas and his sisters Letress Lucas (left) and Abryanne Jones lived together with other family members in Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina. Courtesy of Lucas family

Letress said they were there for days watching the storm as flood waters overtook the streets. A diabetic, Letress split a Snickers bar with family as she tried to keep her sugar levels up. The day she was rescued with her family, they walked down what she remembers as 11 flights of stairs. At the bottom, the water came up to her chest. She's 6-foot-4.

Letress got in the boat with her grandparents and other extended family members to head toward Chef Menteur Highway, where they were supposed to be transported by 18-wheeler back to the French Quarter. When they arrived, the rest of Letress' family was able to get on an 18-wheeler.

There was no room for her, so she slept on the side of the road for a night, surviving on water and chewing gum given to her by a stranger. The next morning, she said she got on an 18-wheeler, reached downtown and recovered her truck in the garage.

"I remember getting into my truck and all I wanted was to sit down and get the cold air, the AC, the cool air," Letress said. "I remember when I came out of Canal Place, I was riding and I started riding down the strip by the convention center. I stopped by some police and I said I'm looking for my family.

"They said you just need to get off this side of the river. You need to just leave. They told me don't stop at no stop signs, just a rolling stop, because people are getting hurt out here."

She did, eventually reaching a Wal-Mart on the west bank of the city where she slept and received clothes. She called her family in Atlanta to let them know she was OK. Then she found her New Orleans family and they drove to Georgia.

"It was like 15 of us living in one house in Atlanta," Priscilla said. "We were making meals, trying to make do, calling back home to try and see what could be seen and visible.

"My mom lost everything. Letress lost everything. I lost everything. I don't even like this time of the year. I don't like to think about it."

After Katrina hit, electrician jobs became plentiful in New Orleans. So the family moved back. Lucas' stepfather went first, landing a job in St. Bernard Parish to help rebuild the city. The rest of the family followed in November, 2005.

When they returned, devastation remained.

"It seemed like everything was dust," Letress Lucas said. "Everything was mildew. Everything was old. Everything had been soaking in water for so long. It had a horrible, horrible, horrible smell.

"Every house, every building had writing on it where there were [markings] of how many people they rescued out of there, animals. Everything was tore up. Everything was demolished."

Priscilla said the family lived in a trailer outside one of her aunt's homes on the west bank until they were able to move, contributing monthly for utilities while everything was rebuilt.

In the months that followed, Lucas helped his grandfather gut houses, including the one belonging to his grandmother. His grandmother's house had been the one that felt most like home as a kid, the one he would go to hang out in often.

Now, the smell of the homes he helped gut made him sick.

"I remember having terrible headaches from being around the mold," Lucas said. "Now that was an experience. I would go inside and lay in bed for three or four hours and wouldn't open my eyes. Just being around the mold, if you think about it, those houses had been there for three or four months just sitting there.

"So when you walk in the house, you don't know if it is carpet or if it is mold. It looked like carpet growing on the floor, growing on the wall."

It is a smell he will never forget.

Ten years after Katrina, Lucas sat in a small folding chair inside Detroit's practice facility, recounting his family's journey -- his journey. How all the events of his past -- his father's death when he was 7 and Katrina when he was 14 -- shaped where he is now. For everything his family went through during Katrina and after, there is one piece that could be viewed as a positive.

If Katrina hadn't happened and Lucas had not moved back to New Orleans after the hurricane, he might not be in the NFL, currently slotted as the Lions' No. 3 offensive tackle. He hadn't played football his one year in Georgia, attempting basketball instead. Returning to Edna Karr his sophomore year, football coach Jabbar Juluke waited for him in front of the school.

He didn't know about Lucas' growth spurt and that the eighth-grader he knew was now 6-foot-6. When Juluke saw him, he said, "Wow." He told Lucas he had to play football. Lucas said, "Yeah, Coach, I'll see you out there."

Lucas went out that day. Juluke stayed on him, too, and Lucas says now "the rest is history." See, Cornelius Lucas may not have physically been in New Orleans when Katrina hit, but his family was. And like many others from New Orleans, the storm shifted his life.

"It was a trying time," Lucas said. "That's why when people ask me about Katrina, I always have to get it out of the way, like, I wasn't there personally but I still went through it. Still went through the heartbreak of losing everything, worrying about my family.

"The only thing I wasn't there for was the flood waters."