HAMMOND — Twenty years ago, Louisiana experienced a once-in-a-lifetime storm. With it, lives change drastically, especially for those who lived through Hurricane Katrina on the front lines.

Tangipahoa Sheriff Gerald Sticker and Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ashley Rodrigue discussed how the storm changed and prepared them for life two decades later.

In the summer of 2005, Ashley Rodrigue had just graduated from LSU and had just started working at WBRZ behind the scenes.

“I started, I'm pretty sure it was June first,” Rodrigue said. "I was just rocking and rolling, learning the things."

Being from southeast Louisiana, Rodrigue says she was familiar with hurricanes, and the thought of helping cover one from a newsroom was sort of exciting. Some of her family lived on the West Bank, and others lived in Chalmette, but they would soon all relocate to Baton Rouge.

“I was fortunate to be around a lot of people who understood,” Rodrigue said.

Sheriff Sticker was working for the Mandeville Police Department at the time.

"As the storm was approaching, we didn't go exactly where the storm was going to go," Sticker said. “I just remember being woken up around three or four o'clock that morning, and it just sounded like the world was falling apart.”

For some people, it was the end of the world as they knew it. The storm destroyed Rodrigue’s grandfather’s home in Chalmette.

“It was reality to you that it wasn't just a story,” Rodrigue said. “It was our lives.”

Twenty years later, the pair says those memories shape the work they do at the sheriff’s office.

“I believe that many people here took those experiences they have from as far back as Katrina, and every time there's something, they learn something, and they remember it, and they bring it back, so that we can be more efficient each time,” Rodrigue said.