Sasha Smith was out of work and battling throat cancer when, on Aug. 29, 2005, the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina began to lap against her home in Orleans Parish. The young mother clutched her 2-year-old son Alex and fled to the overcrowded Louisiana Superdome, waiting out the storm alongside tens of thousands of others who had no means to evacuate the city and would have no homes to return to.