Hope in Haiti: Haitian-American Connects With Family

Jan. 22, 2010— -- The earthquake in Haiti last week destroyed the family homes of tens of thousands of U.S. Haitians who are still desperately struggling to make contact with loved ones.

There are at least 800,000 Haitians living in the United States, or perhaps a million, according to the World Bank, many striving to make a better life for families back home.

Alta Grace Lovesey is one of them.

Since she left a middle-class home in Port-au-Prince to move to New York at 21, Alta has worked on Park Avenue in New York City as a family's housekeeper. Alta, 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.

Alta has always sent barrels of supplies to support 15 members of her family who depend on her hard-earned money. Out of every $100 she earns, "$70 goes to Haiti," she said.

One in every five Haitian households receives money from loved ones abroad, according to the Haitian Census.

The devastating earthquake happened thousands of miles from Alta's modest Manhattan home but unfolded in front of her very eyes. She watched on television as her world crumbled, recognizing her house in the wreckage.

"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.

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. News about the rest of her family was difficult to come by, and, at her request, ABC News went in search of her surviving sister, Bernadette, in Port-au-Prince.