Rosie O’Donnell Helped Homeless Hurricane Katrina Survivors Start Over (Exclusive)

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, Rosie O’Donnell says, “The biggest thing I remember were the children and the elderly.”

Catastrophic images of people “in the most overwhelming amount of need” galvanized the comedian and former talk show host to get help to approximately 1,600 survivors living in the Renaissance Village trailer park in Baker, La., north of Baton Rouge.

“I saw the result of severe trauma on people who weren’t paid much attention to before Katrina — the cumulative effect of the trauma they had lived with, plus this unbearable trauma of losing everything,” O’Donnell, now 63, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, marking the storm’s 20th anniversary.

She formed a league of her own and eventually donated several million dollars.

As PEOPLE reported at the time, O’Donnell and her For All Kids Foundation (now part of Rosiestheaterkids.org) worked in 2006 with local churches, the YMCA, Head Start and other groups to build a six-building community center on the property in Baker, complete with child care and a playground as well as therapy and counseling.

“I was very moved by seeing the children, figuring out what they needed, [figuring out] how do you get through the bureaucracy,” she says. 

But “I was very determined,” she says. “My family, Kelly’s family [her then-partner Kelly Carpenter], was from New Orleans so we had people that we could call upon with the money that we gave to go and buy diapers and take them to Renaissance Village.” 

In February 2006, she saw it all firsthand when she visited the area early in her charity work there.

“There was a woman named Ms. Annie who was in her late 90s, and she came over to me and she said, ‘Oh, Miss Rosie, I was walking in water up to here [points to her chest] and I thought God’s going to take me,’ ” O’Donnell recounts. “The stories that you would hear about Miss Annie walking through waist-high, chest-high deep waters with dead bodies in them — I wanted to help.”

The comedian and the storm survivor, Annie Ford, forged a special connection.

“She said, ‘I don’t want to die here.’ So I made sure she didn’t, and we got her an apartment to live in until she passed,” says O’Donnell. “She had lost everything. Luckily she had family and a man carried her through the flood waters.”

Many of the people she met at Renaissance Village were “still in shock and trauma. The amount of people, especially the children, who wanted to just run and touch me — and I just would sit down and say, ‘Come on, let’s see what we can do.’ ”

All these years later, O’Donnell says, “My heart starts to beat faster when I talk about it because I remember what it felt like to be there and to think, ‘There has to be more I can do.’ ”

Now living in a small village outside of Dublin, with her youngest child, 12-year-old Clay, the mom of five says. “I’ll never forget the people on the roof writing, ‘Help us,’ and the president not going [immediately] and not doing what a president needs to do in times of national crises.” (George W. Bush’s response to the hurricane was widely scrutinized, as were the decisions of local and state leaders.)

“It was hard to come to terms with the fact that you can try all your life and never do enough, no matter who you are,” says O’Donnell. “And I think that’s what propels many to keep trying.”

She doesn’t plan to stop her philanthropy and outspoken activism.

“Often times people would say to me, ‘Why do you care? It’s not happening to you. Why do you care about abortion rights? You’re not going to get pregnant. You’re a gay woman,’ ” she says. “I care about things that don’t have to affect me personally. And isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? We’re supposed to just care about each other as human beings.”

Take PEOPLE with you! Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more — right to your mailbox.

“When I look at Dolly Parton and what she does to help people, her hometown, how she promotes compassion and understanding for all types of people. I admire her,” O’Donnell says. “I admire Paul Newman, what he did to help so many people with Newman’s Own.”

As for her own time working in the aftermath of Katrina, she says, “I felt very lucky to be a part of all those people who were helping. And there are many now in the current political situation who are trying to help and use their voice. And I admire and respect all of them. ” 

“It’s my responsibility to stand up for the values of being an American and knowing that liberty and justice means for all,” she says.

“Imagine you could do what Paul Newman did — imagine if you could take your name at the end of your career and use it only for the benefit of others. What a way to go.”