Couple continue hurricane aid

Newport Beach pair plan relief trip for next month, hope people will remember 2005’s disaster in the new year. It’s a new year of charitable giving, but a Newport Beach couple are hoping that philanthropists don’t turn their backs on one of last year’s biggest causes.

Susan and Bill Groux are set to return to the New Orleans area during the first week of February as they continue relief work and fundraising for Hurricane Katrina victims.

One of their main objectives on this trip is to help animals who have been abandoned since the storm hit in the fall.

“They [relief organizers] are still winging it down there,” Groux said. “The proportion of this disaster is unimaginable. People still can’t get their arms around it.”

Susan and Bill Groux each made a trip to the Gulf Coast region in 2005 to see the wreckage. Both said their greatest fear is that those who haven’t been to survey the scene are under the false impression that most of the relief work is done.

When he goes to New Orleans next month, Bill Groux plans to run in the Mardi Gras Half-Marathon to raise money for hurricane victims. He said he is turning to some Newport-Mesa residents for donations.

And the couple will volunteer their time at Celebration Station, a New Orleans animal shelter where rescued pets are given nourishment and care.

An owner of five pets -- three dogs and two cats-- Susan Groux said she couldn’t imagine having to evacuate her house without the animals in tow.

She discovered the need for helping homeless animals during her relief work during previous disasters, including the California wildfires.

During her first trip to New Orleans in September, Susan Groux worked with an organization called Emergency Animal Rescue Service in aiding abandoned animals.

“I couldn’t wait. They needed help badly,” Susan Groux said. “This was mass pandemonium. We had so many animals to take care of. They were in cages and we worked 18-hour days and slept in our cars at night.”

An estimated 10,000 pets have been rescued from that region, Groux said, and thousands still are at large.

Bill Groux, an entrepreneur who founded Retention Education, a company that developed an interactive English program for native Spanish speakers, traveled to New Orleans in December.

He was invited on the Hinges of Hope tour through Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger organization that has taken groups on tours through devastated regions of the Gulf Coast.

Bill Groux said he is looking to start a West Coast chapter of Share Our Strength to raise awareness of the relief work that remains.

Susan Groux said she has urged everyone she knows to adopt pets through their local shelters. That way, she said, space is freed up for pets who need temporary housing after being rescued from the hurricane zone.

And both continue to echo the messages they have heard -- and likely will hear -- from those living and working in the Gulf Coast.

“What they asked us to take back to our community is this: ‘Please don’t forget about us -- the rebuilding is an ongoing process,’ ” Bill Groux said.

20060104isjxojncDOUGLAS ZIMMERMAN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Susan and Bill Groux, shown with their dog Frank, helped out in New Orleans with an organization that targets child hunger.