Frank Hirsch is a corporate lawyer, Lorna a business executive. They live on the 10th hole of the North Ridge Country Club in Raleigh. They believed they had the means, and the heart, to nurse the weary and desperate family back to normalcy.

It hasn't been that simple.

The six lives of this Katrina-spawned family -- crossing geographic, social, economic and racial boundaries -- have grown into a tangle of wants, needs and expectations. Howard, McDonald and her boys from a previous relationship have become more reliant on their hosts than any of them ever predicted.

And the Hirsches have come to hope for something from their new dependents that they may never see: success -- according to their own definition of the term.

"In the long run, I think this will be the best thing that ever happened to the boys," said Frank Hirsch, 44, a law partner at Nelson Mullins in Raleigh. "And I think it has really, really long-term upside potential for Calvin and Brandy as well. But they've had to go through a hell of a lot to get here."

Howard, 31, a chef for a catering business, and McDonald, a laborer, lived together with the two boys in a subsidized duplex until Aug. 30, when New Orleans' levees failed. Their home, in one of the lowest parts of the city, filled with water so quickly that the family was forced to flee, first to the second floor, and then to the attic, with little more than the clothes on their backs.

They also were trapped, with the water reaching above the attic's floors. With a butcher knife, McDonald cut a hole in the roof, and the family crawled through, took a rescue boat to dry land and survived for six lawless days in an abandoned hotel downtown before they were taken by helicopter to the airport and flown to the Triangle on Sept. 6.

That same night in Raleigh, the Hirsches watched Oprah Winfrey's TV program about Katrina. They said to each other, "We've got to do something." The next day, Lorna Hirsch, 35, was doing some work for her employer at the evacuation center in West Raleigh when she met Howard, McDonald and the two boys.

Lorna Hirsch was eager for intimacy. Khalil, 10, and Khayle (pronounced Kyle), 8, made it easy. Khalil followed Hirsch around the shelter like a lost soul. Hirsch called her husband to talk about doing more. He agreed to meet her and their new friends at a Target.

It was an easy beginning to the relationship. The Hirsches bought more than $1,000 of essentials for Howard and McDonald. Weary and frazzled, the two browsed numbly for T-shirts, pants and underwear. Khalil and Khayle delighted over boxing gloves and baseball bats in the toy aisles -- and Frank Hirsch, the father of two teenaged girls from a previous marriage, delighted over them, too.

"I met the two most giving people I've ever met in my life," Howard said. "I've never met anyone that would just put their life on hold and worry more about mine and worry about my family."

In the space of an hour, the Hirsches decided to invite the Howard-McDonald family to stay with them. They thought the boys would thrive in the safety and comfort of their world. Brandy Howard agreed. As Lorna Hirsch ferried Howard and McDonald back to the shelter to slog through the bureaucracy of disaster assistance, Frank piled the boys in his Lexus and took them home.

Different worlds

The Hirsches recognized early that they were making an impulsive decision. These were strangers who didn't look like the people in their neighborhood, who lived in a world of hourly wages, food stamps, housing assistance. Frank Hirsch laughed to himself the first time he watched "these two little dark-skinned boys" riding his daughters' bicycles on the street.

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