The contrast to Peterson's ad hoc tactics couldn't be greater. "I've never met the mayor," he says. "I don't know anybody. We Xeroxed the DISD forms to enroll the kids--that's as far as we got into paperwork."
When FEMA denied benefits to evacuees without bank accounts, Peterson sent them next door to Bank One to open accounts. The first applicant returned and said the bank was requiring a $25 initial deposit. For the next several people, Peterson simply paid out of his own pocket. He later walked over himself and convinced the manager to waive the deposit rule.
Mark Graham
Dave Peterson risked his business--and became a hero.
Mark Graham
Donated supplies poured in from all over the country,
including two truckloads from North Dakota.
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All those involved agree that the response of Dallas itself was magnificent--for those in the shelters. For those in hotels, however, programs like the mayor's Project Exodus smacked of the absurd. Keith Womble, a nephew of Kathy Neason, found an apartment in Plano for his family the second week after Katrina struck. Shortly after, Mayor Miller called the complex urging the manager to join Project Exodus. The manager gave the mayor Womble's phone number. He recalls this exchange:
"Hi, this is Laura Miller!"
"OK, who the hell is Laura Miller?"
"I'm the mayor of Dallas."
"OK, how'd you get this number?"
Womble chuckles as he recounts the conversation: "She asked me if I'd like to be part of Project Exodus, so I told her, 'You have a whole lot of people in hotels or in cars that never went to a shelter, and whenever their resources run out they're going to wind up in the shelters you're trying to empty.' She said, 'Well, you have a point there. Would you mind if I paid your utilities for two months?' and I said, 'Not at all!'"
At the end of the day, however, Peterson readily concedes that the government will eventually be his saving grace. His records show 10,000 individual stays for the month of September, an astronomical figure reflected in the size of the compensation checks that have finally started to roll in. Peterson remembers the moment when he got his first check in mid-October. "I thought, 'My God--it worked!'"
Peterson's voice breaks with emotion when he talks about his own role. "I could just be a hotel guy," he says. "I could take a bunch of hotels and run them really well and be very successful. But this was a shot to use that in a totally different way, to make this huge difference. Not many people get that opportunity in their entire lifetime. It was like we had this hotel to be able to do this. It was a privilege to have it and to be able to do it."
Needless to say, the evacuees think Peterson is overly modest. The Womble clan recently returned to the Quality Inn for a wedding of their own, that of Katie Neason's nephew Eric. At the reception, the Petersons beam with pride at the joyful faces around them. Rumor has it they skipped out of a ritzy charity ball to attend this modest event at their own hotel, more proof that, as Neason puts it, "You'll never find anybody else like those Petersons."
