"Excuse me, are you from Elgin?" she asked.

"Yeah, do I know you?" said the 19-year-old who was about to begin her week of helping rebuild homes here with about 60 of her peers.

The woman, Michelle Peters, recognized Becky from an Elgin home schooling group in which she and Becky's mom participated.

Michelle traveled to the coastal town with her son, Sean, father, Larry Mauffray, and grandmother, Flora Mauffray, for the weekend to survey what remained of a hardware store that her family owned for more than a century.

Flora Mauffray, 96, talks about her life as a resident of Bay St. Louis, while her granddaughter, Michelle Peters of Elgin, fills in the details.

Flora, who is 96, ran the store for two years after her husband died in 1990. She sold it a decade ago and was delighted to see it had become an antique shop.

Before the storm.

"It was beautiful," said Flora, tired from her emotional walk near the rubble of the store where she spent most of her life.

Flora had been living alone within blocks of the beachfront store and the church where she volunteered. After the storm destroyed Flora's apartment, Michelle cared for her grandmother for four months in Elgin.

"The people in Elgin are so friendly," she said in her southern drawl.

"They always talk of southern hospitality, but every restaurant in Elgin treated her like a queen," added Michelle, a nursing student at Elgin Community College.

Moments earlier, Becky's friends from Elgin High School climbed through what was left of the hardware store to salvage brick mementos for the family.

And even though Flora knew the store and most of her hometown was gone, it hit hard when she saw it for herself.

"You wouldn't believe it unless you came to see it," she said. "The paper doesn't do it justice. The big shots in Washington should be flown down here to see the terrible devastation."

"Oh, Lord, have mercy on us."

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