Jenniece "Nissi" Fraise, 22, has had a run of tough luck in the past two years. Somehow, the soft-spoken widow, new mother and evacuee of New Orleans has found the courage to face each day with the conviction to carry on.

"I really don't have any choice," said Fraise, who fled New Orleans with her family before Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast and is now one of 18 evacuees who have found refuge in Hawai'i, according to the American Red Cross.

Fraise, her 1-year-old daughter, Jireh, and her 18-year-old sister, Jasmine King, arrived on O'ahu about a week ago and have been staying at the home of friends, Cedric and Yasmeen Smith in Helemano.

"I called up Yasmeen and told her, 'I just didn't know what to do,' " she said. "She talked to her husband, Cedric, and they both agreed that it was time for us to come here."

Hawai'i has opened its homes, its schools and its hearts to Hurricane Katrina survivors.

According to Red Cross officials, people from Biloxi, Miss.; New Orleans; Metairie, La.; Marrero, La.; and Harvey, La., have found temporary homes here.

Local schools and universities are also pitching in. Five students have registered at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa from the disaster area, and six students — three in Kailua and three on the Big Island — have enrolled in private schools after coming to Hawai'i to stay with family.

The widespread aloha is hopefully a sign of good things to come, particularly for Fraise.

In June 2004, her husband, Army Cpl. David Fraise, 24, was the first Schofield soldier killed in enemy action in Afghanistan when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb near Kandahar.

In June 2005, starting over, Fraise bought a home in Gretna, La., a little community on the Mississippi River directly across from metropolitan New Orleans. Then, just before Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, Fraise, her baby, sister, grandmother, auntie, and cousins fled the city in the family SUV with little more than their clothes. Fourteen hours later they checked into a Houston hotel.

"We definitely didn't want to try and ride the storm out," said Fraise, who had spent her whole life in New Orleans' 9th Ward, graduated from high school there in 2001 and was a full-time student at New Orleans University when Katrina devastated the coast.

For the Smiths, helping a friend in need seemed to be the right thing to do.

"They couldn't go back," said Yasmeen Smith, 26. "They came over here because her husband was stationed over here. My husband's also stationed at Schofield."

Fraise has no idea what's left of her home, but on the first of November she will return with her baby and sister to find out.

"I just know I'm going to go back to the city, try to find what I can and just go from there," she said. "I can't give up. My baby depends on me.

"I've been through tougher times, and this won't get the best of me. Even though we don't have anything anymore, I've told my baby, we can get through this."

STUDENTS ENROLL

Elizabeth Clendenin of Nu'uanu is one of the students enrolled at a Gulf Coast school now attending UH. She was planning to attend Loyola University in New Orleans this semester. Hurricane Katrina put an end to that.

After a panic-inducing few hours in the New Orleans airport and a few days of obsessively watching television news at the home of an inland woman who rescued her, Clendenin made it back home.

Clendenin said she hopes Loyola will reopen in the spring, and she can finish her degree in criminal justice then.

As the storm was building, Clendenin, with the help of her mother, Jeanne, was preparing for her third year at Loyola. She wasn't that worried. She had seen hurricanes approach before.

"I've evacuated three times," she said. "Nothing ever happened."

On the Saturday before the storm, Jeanne Clendenin — in New Orleans helping her daughter prepare for school — decided they should get out. Elizabeth would fly to Detroit to visit relatives for a few days.

On Sunday, both women drove to the airport well in advance of their two flights. Elizabeth Clendenin had put her mother on the airplane just before hearing the announcement.

"They said all flights after 9 a.m. were canceled," she said.

That meant her mother, whose plane was preparing for takeoff, would make it out. Clendenin, along with her fellow travelers on the ground, would be stuck in New Orleans.

The airport erupted in madness. Clendenin, in tears, got out her cell phone and called her mother. The two women made frantic calls across the country and state, locating relatives, friends and their friends. Eventually, a friend of a friend from a small town in Louisiana drove into New Orleans, rescued Clendenin from the airport and took her to higher ground to ride out the storm.

Clendenin recently learned her apartment building escaped both the flooding and looters, and her school fared better than expected.

She feels a bit lonely and displaced now, but she hopes she will soon be rebuilding her life on the Gulf Coast.

LEARNING TO ADJUST

Other students are learning to adjust to new lives in Hawai'i schools as well.

Greg Knudsen, communications director for the state Department of Education, sent a memo this week to school principals asking them to contact Judy Tonda of the DOE's Special Programs Management Section, who will help with enrollment if needed for students displaced by the hurricane. Tonda, a resource teacher who specializes in homeless concerns, said no principals had contacted her as of yesterday afternoon.

Carl Sturges, headmaster of the private Parker School in Waimea on the Big Island, said three children from Gulfport, Miss., have enrolled there. They are living with their aunt, Laura Inaba, while their father stays behind in Gulfport, Miss., to help with the cleanup and dealing with the destruction of their home. He works for the Department of Homeland Security as an emergency medical technician.

Inaba teaches at the school.

"Even five days after the hurricane, Laura wasn't able to contact them," said Parker headmaster Carl Sturges. "Their house collapsed around them, the roof blew off and they huddled under mattresses in an interior passageway for safety."

As the three children — Max in 11th grade, Brooke in ninth and Logan in fifth — settled into a temporary home in Hawai'i, they've been showered with help from the community. The school waived tuition and continues to fundraise to help them with clothing and books. Others have been sending money to help, and even offering their aunt things like extra beds, said Sturges.

HOME DESTROYED

On O'ahu, Le Jardin Academy in Kailua has opened its doors to the three Ladner children — Brittney, 15, Austin, 12 and Cameron, 6 — whose home was destroyed in Diamondhead, Miss.

Lisa Ladner's parents live in 'Aiea and she and another brother and his family moved in with them after the destruction of both their homes by the hurricane. But now the Ladners are staying in the upstairs of a home of friends in Kailua, and the children are enrolled in school.

"The two boys seem to be adjusting well," says Ladner, "but every once in a while my youngest one says, 'Can we go home now?' We just look at each other and say, 'We can't go home. ... We don't have a home.'"

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.