"I was sitting in church and my dad and Haiti popped into my head," Olden wondered aloud. "It was almost like I had a vision."

Then everything went to a blur for Olden, just as it did for the rest of an estimated 850,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States, and more scattered elsewhere throughout the world, as word and eventually images of the devastation of their homeland spread.

He called his father from his cell phone and got nothing. He sent his father a text and received no response. Over and over again he did both only to get the same agonizing and gut-wrenching result.

Olden said he retreated to his bedroom and turned on the television. There he remained flipping the channels from one all-news network to another, from one news account to the next, just hoping to catch of glimpse of the man he called dad. He saw images of the Parliament turned to rubble. The tax office collapsed. Schools fallen. The main hospital in ruin. Church steeples toppled. He heard Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive say there were probably over 100,000 people dead.

"I didn't know what to do," Olden said. "I was just stuck there, waiting to hear."