Career
This photograph became an iconic symbol of the Katrina survivors. Hendricks was born in 1920 in Louisiana. Like 137,000 other citizens in New Orleans, she did not own or drive a car.
The rising water forced her to evacuate to her son"s home in New Orleans East.
However, in boarding a rescue boat, she lost her belongings. She had been temporarily evacuated to Arkansas.
According to an August 28, 2006 article by Associated Press reporters Allen G. Breed and Vicki Smith, who revisited Katrina survivors to mark the first anniversary of the disaster, the elderly Hendricks remembers almost nothing of her ordeal after losing her belongings. Hendricks spent the last of her years in relative peace and anonymity.
She died in Houston, Texas on July 20, 2009 at the age of 89.
Her body was brought back to New Orleans for funeral services and buried there.