Haitian-Americans Try to Send Help Back Home
Thousands saw their families' homes destroyed in their native Haiti.
Jan. 15, 2010— -- Watching the horror of the earthquake on television, Alta Grace Lovesey recognized the plot of ground in her native Haiti where her grandfather built a house and where she sent her hard-earned money for nearly 30 years. The place was reduced to rubble.
"When it happened I said, 'God, I lost everything,'" Lovesey told ABC News.
The pancaked building she saw used to be a three-story house where 15 members of her family lived.
"Oh, God, all of them are dead? You cannot do this to me," she said when she saw the rubble.
Haitian immigrants, like our own families, came to this country and toiled and sacrificed for the American dream.
There are at least 800,000 Haitians living in the United States, and perhaps a million, according to the World Bank, many striving to make a better life for their loved ones back home.
Since she left a middle-class home in Port-au-Prince to move to New York at the age of 21, Lovesey has worked on Park Avenue in New York as a family's housekeeper.
She has an angelic smile and a sweet soul. She has become a beloved member of the family for whom she works.
But when the earthquake struck her hometown of Port-au-Prince Tuesday, Lovesey was overcome with emotion.
She didn't lose everything, but the news she received was still devastating. Her brothers and cousins survived, but her two nieces and her sister Mona died in the earthquake. She used to call Mona nearly every day.
Some of her family members are still unaccounted for. Three nieces and nephews she supported and sent to school for years are still missing.
Lovesey, who worked 20-hour days seven days a week as a housekeeper and overnight nurse's aide, sent most of her earnings back to her family in Haiti.
She estimates that she's sent 70 cents of every dollar she's earned back to Haiti to help renovate the family home or to school the children.
Long before the quake, Lovesey routinely sent barrels full of food, clothing and school supplies to her family and neighbors.
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