The Warwick mother who travelled to flooded Louisiana in search of her two sons, said yesterday she would never have found them if a handful of Bermudians living in Texas had not come to her aid.

Jean La Montagne and her daughter Ronisa Defontes spent two agonising weeks sneaking into shelters in Texas and Louisiana, pretending to be volunteers as they searched for missing teenagers, Jamel (19) and Jashun (17) Thomas.

The boys were visiting their father in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit.

In a candid interview last night Ms La Montagne said Bermudians Catherine and James Robinson were ?phenomenal? and offered her a place to stay ? even though they had never met her before.

Two other Bermudians she had also never met, Jeff and Pam Ryall offered their help by driving her around to the various shelters in search of her sons.

?They were also volunteers so they got me into the shelters and helped me look for the boys,? she said.

Mrs. La Montagne said: ?I realised that it?s not about which political party you belong to, or what colour your are, or how much money you have. It?s about one Bermuda and sticking together during difficult times and I?m proud of that, proud to be Bermudian.?

She said another Bermudian, Dennis Mello organised a mobile phone she could use during her stay in the US and called the British Embassy to help in the search.

?They went around banging on doors looking for the boys and when we found them, they called to say they were still looking for one more British citizen,? she said.

Mrs. La Montagne said when the found the boys at the Lamar-Dixon Expo Centre, an evacuation shelter in Gonzalez in Louisiana, they had luckily only been there four days.

?They spent time with their father and then at the shelter because he was ex-military and was helping rescuers in the area, so the boys went backwards and forwards between the two places,? she said.

She added that the boys father was still searching for his daughter and her baby who were still missing.

?The shelter was nasty stinking place and looked like a concentration camp with big tanks everywhere and Police carrying guns, but my boys never complained, not once,? she said.

They were so happy to see their mother that only three days later did anyone notice that one of them had no shoes.

?He just never complained even though he lost everything,? she said.

One of the biggest problems in trying to find someone, she said, was the lack of some type of network.

?You have to go to every shelter to find someone because no one knows which shelter they might be in,? she said.

She added that there were thousands of children ?missing? because of this.

?I heard they took the children and put them on buses and sent them in a different direction to that of their parents,? she said.

?They thought they were doing the right thing.?

Mrs. La Montagne said it was an experience neither she, nor the boys would soon forget, adding that she had received various offers for a book deal about the three week ordeal.

?I said fine, as long as the money from the sales go towards helping the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.?