Family of 20 Thought They’d Be Homeless After Hurricane and Then a Texas Mom Opened Her Door

Family means everything to James McCray. Twenty years ago, when Hurricane Katrina forced his family to evacuate to Texas, he made sure all 20 members stayed together.

Even before knowing the McCrays, Sue Sandford, now 56, was looking at her five-bedroom home in Dallas to see how many people she could help. The volunteer relief worker and single mom told PEOPLE that she figured she could move her four young children into her bedroom and still have room for about 20 evacuees.

When she learned about the McCrays, she offered to take the whole family in.

“It was Labor Day weekend, and my kids were at their dad’s house, so nobody was home,” Sandford recalls. “I dropped them off and spent the weekend helping out in the shelter.”

McCray admits he was skeptical at first. “I want to see this person,” he remembered thinking.

“She told me her neighborhood was like 99.9% White, and I thought something was wrong with that picture,” McCray says. “I didn’t want to go, but my whole family said they were leaving with or without me.”

Fortunately, everything worked out. As McCray says, “we wound up making a lifetime friend,” who is now an honorary member of the family.

Linda McCray tells PEOPLE that Sue immediately trusted them, saying her house was their house and they should treat it like their own.

When Sandford finally returned home that first day, she went straight to bed, exhausted. She woke up to the most wonderful smells: the McCrays had gone shopping and were cooking a feast.

They had cleaned her garage, fired up the grill, and made double-battered fried chicken, peach cobbler, potato salad, and macaroni and cheese.

Sandford says she wouldn’t wish Katrina on anyone, “but it certainly brought the best of humanity through my door, and I was very grateful.”

Her neighbors also helped by bringing supplies like diapers and clothing. One 92-year-old neighbor even baked peanut butter cookies for the family.

“They were like hockey pucks,” Sandford laughs. “She also cut out every newspaper clipping and photocopied it to make a scrapbook.”

The McCrays wrote a thank-you note to every single household. “It still gives me chills,” Sandford says.

The family eventually rented a house in Texas after staying with Sandford for about two months. They stayed in touch and made a pact: she would come to Mardi Gras after they returned to New Orleans to rebuild, and they would visit Dallas on the anniversary of Katrina.

After her children grew up, Sandford moved to New York and became an EMT, working in crisis management. Linda McCray visited her there, but her husband, who was afraid of flying, refused to get on a plane.

He did, however, promise to attend Sandford’s wedding in the Bahamas—and extended that offer to her daughter. That’s how he ended up flying for the first time last October, on his 75th birthday. The trip even helped him overcome his fear of flying, and now he says he can visit his friend anywhere.

That September, after Hurricane Francine flooded James and Linda’s daughter Jasmine’s home, Sandford, working with relief organization All Hands and Hearts, helped again.

“I said, ‘That’s my family. Can we gut her house and get it ready to rebuild?’” Sandford says. “It was a horrible full circle, but I got to see James, Linda, Jasmine, and the kids.”

The McCrays call Sue their angel—a true friend and family member who helped them in their time of need and stayed in their lives.

Sandford treasures the friendship and simply says, “All I did was open a door.”