Saints' Super Bowl Victory Reminds New Orleans How Far It's Come

Feb. 8, 2010— -- For the last 24 hours, the images coming out of New Orleans have shown a city rocking to a victorious beat, as proud residents celebrate their first ever Super Bowl victory.

On Sunday night, brass bands trumpeted their way through throngs of people filling up the legendary Bourbon Street. Eighty-year-old New Orleaneans had tears in their eyes as they linked arms with equally touched teenagers. The people of Who Dat Nation were dancing and cheering wildly till the wee hours of the morning, bursting with pride that, at this moment, all eyes are were on their beloved city.

Less than five years ago, all eyes were on New Orleans as well, though for a starkly different reason. Its streets were filled with people, but they were not crying tears of joy -- they were crying out for help.

They were wading knee-deep through the floodwaters left by Hurricane Katrina. They were searching through piles of bodies at the morgue to see if they could find their loved ones. They were evacuated from their homes, crowded into a crowded Superdome and convention center, searching for food, medicine and water. In many cases, they simply left the city.

Cindy Davis was one of the thousands who hunkered down at the city's convention center during Hurricane Katrina. Davis did not leave for Alabama with her family the day before Katrina made landfall -- she knew her nursing skills would be needed.

"That's what I signed up for," Davis told ABC News in an interview today. "I am a nurse. When it turned into what it turned into, I wanted to be there."

So this mother of three sent off her family to safety, and stayed at the hospital where she worked -- until she herself was evacuated, along with her patients, to the convention center. She remained there for four days.

"It was chaos," she said. "It was just a bunch of people trying to survive."

On the third day, as Davis was attending to one of her patients, she heard commotion a few feet away from here.

"Someone yelled out 'We need help' and someone pointed to me saying I was a nurse. I went over to see what I could do and saw a woman passed out. She had diabetes."

Davis cried out in the crowd for orange juice and insulin.

She attended to the young woman on the ground, Joyce Johnson, before ABC News' cameras. She gave Johnson an insulin shot, preventing her from falling into diabetic shock. Johnson, who had been without her insulin for four days, was nearing organ failure because her blood sugar was hovering near 600.

"I was very emotional after it all happened. I kept thinking, 'this woman could die, I'm here with patients, my family's somewhere else. There's no food, there's no water, the sanitation conditions were horrible.'"