Vicksburg residents have no idea how wonderful it is to live here, said Karen Frederick.

And she should know. She’s a Bay St. Louis transplant who moved here last year after giving up on rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.

&#8220Despite losing everything, I now know this is how my life was always supposed to be,” the 59-year-old said.

Frederick has done a lot in her life – lived oversees, taught junior high and high school, worked as a lab technician for DuPont Engineering Polymers. But it hasn’t been until the past year that she’s truly enjoyed life, she said.

She said she’s always been drawn to the River City.

&#8220I’ve visited Vicksburg before – once for a leadership conference years ago and once to visit friends while I was seven months pregnant with my oldest daughter. She’s 31 now,” she said.

And looking back, this is somewhere she’s always seen herself living, she said.

After spending a month in Jackson, her evacuation site from the storm, Frederick moved back down to the Gulf Coast with intentions of rebuilding her life.

&#8220I remember the first time I saw where my house once stood. I was convinced that wasn’t where it was. I lived there for 30 years and I didn’t recognize it,” she said.

Life definitely wasn’t what it once was down there, she said.

&#8220Someone kept asking me what my plans were. I kept thinking, ‘We’re waiting in line for the basics, like ice. There are no plans,’” she said.

After nine months of living in a FEMA trailer and working at DuPont, where she had worked for 25 years, Frederick decided it was time to start over again.

She retired, picked up what she had left and headed north to find a place to call her new home.

&#8220My daughters started looking with me. We looked at Natchez first,” she said. &#8220I found several houses I liked, and I liked the area, but I felt so isolated.”

Her search continued in Vicksburg, and Frederick said she immediately felt &#8220at home” here.

&#8220I drove around a while. Then I told my daughters, ‘This is it.’ And it was,” she said.

Frederick bought a home last March in the Glenwood Circle area, and soon her new life started falling in place.

&#8220I found a church – Mount Calvary M.B. Church – right down the road, and that’s where I met Charlie Tolliver, the principal at Vicksburg High,” she said.

Tolliver convinced Frederick to add substitute teaching to her schedule as a part-time job. She already was working part time as a guide at Belle of the Bends bed and breakfast.

&#8220Then I became so interested in Vicksburg I started working part time at the Visitor’s Center giving directions and information to tourists,” she said.

&#8220One day, I was rambling on about where to go and what to do, and the visitor said, ‘You must be from here.’ I laughed and said, ‘No, but in a previous life I think I was,’” she said.

Frederick said Vicksburg’s small-town feel is what attracts her.

&#8220I’ve never lived somewhere where the kids in the neighborhood are so polite and so friendly, waving to me saying, ‘Hello, Ms. Frederick!’ she said.

And it’s the kindness of strangers here, too, that Frederick has appreciated.

&#8220When I first moved in, we had a bad storm that knocked the power out, and my neighbor across the street invited me to come stay the night if I felt uncomfortable staying by myself,” she said. &#8220I just love it. I really love it here.”

And to add to her &#8220new life,” Frederick has lost 75 pounds through exercise and healthy eating since she moved to Vicksburg, she said.

&#8220It’s like I’m a new person,” she said.

Frederick made a trip back to Bay St. Louis for Mardi Gras several weeks ago and said she’s glad she made a change in her life for the better.

&#8220It was sad to see all of my friends still living in trailers,” she said.

And she’s even incorporated memories from the storm into her new life, such as her grandmother’s fine china on display that she found perfectly intact stuck in the mud.

&#8220Life is about change, and if you don’t change with it, then you’re just missing out,” she said.