Kevin Sherman, 19, of Elgin re-roofs a home in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Other houses in the neighborhood didn't fare as well and were lost entirely in Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. This was one of a half-dozen homes fixed by suburban Chicago teens during their spring break.

It's only the start of their vacations during the last week in March, seven months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through this tiny coastal town about 40 miles east of New Orleans. And volunteer coordinator David Fox says the 60 suburban Chicago teenagers who've come here to help gut, paint, and otherwise help restore normalcy here will be lucky to re-roof just six to 10 houses.

Looking somewhat deflated after Fox's speech, the teens divide up into work details - intentionally chosen to split high school cliques.

Perhaps reading the crowd, Fox attempts to rekindle the teens' spirit of making a difference.

"I just want you to remember that anything you go through this week is nothing compared to what these people have gone through in the last seven months," he says, the night before work begins. "These people have gone through a lot, and our goal is to be a blessing for them."

For the next week, the teens spend their days working in homes where residents have applied for help and finding things within themselves they never thought possible along the streets of Bay St. Louis and neighboring Waveland, Miss.

Second Street

Lois Smith knew they were coming.

Still, tears flow down her face as a team of teens approaches the trailer parked in the driveway where she and her husband, Chall, have been living since the storm.

Two weeks earlier, the retirees finally admitted to each other that they needed help if they were to move back into their home sometime this year.

Most of the structure had been submerged, even though it stands on stilts about 10 feet above ground.

In the months since the storm, the couple has tried to restore the home they moved into 11 years ago. But Lois injured her shoulder while working on the house and Chall's back already is worn out from loading and unloading the trucks he drove for decades.

Still in her pajamas, Candace Stokes holds her 5-month-old, Gracie, while Becky Robbins, 19, of Elgin pulls nails out of the flood-damaged walls of her home and Sharon Befus, 18, of Elgin sweeps. It is the Stokes' first home.

"This is the first time I've ever asked for help in my life," she says, as Becky Robbins, 19, and Sharon Befus, 18, sing "Amazing Grace" and paint her bedroom walls.

"It's so appreciated," she says. "It's just so touching to my heart that people volunteer down here. We've done so much. We're so worn out."

Lois is even more moved when she discovers Becky and Sharon are from Elgin. She graduated from Elgin High School in 1952 and once modeled hats at the former downtown Elgin retailer, the Joseph Spiess Co.

To thank the girls, as well as Matt Reinhardt, 16, of West Chicago, Lois cooks a southern meal of breaded pork chops, mashed potatoes, pork gravy, salad and corn pudding pie.

They gobble the grub, but the trio doesn't sit for long.

While in Lois' yard, a Chihuahua named Sassy leads the girls to the home next door, where they meet Candace and Chad Stokes and their baby daughter, Gracie.

Touched by the Stokes' plight, the girls beg their group leader to help the couple gut their storm damaged home.

They win.

The next morning, the young couple is surprised to see the teens before 8.

"We thought we'd never see them again," Candace says, still in her pajamas.

Danny Lopez, Sharon Befus, Melissa Molskow, Kelly Siefert, Zach Butters and Chelsea Strok knock down a tool shed that floated into Jack Smith's front yard during the hurricane. Smith couldn't do the work himself or afford to pay someone to do so.

Becky immediately grabs Gracie, eager to baby sit. Having someone to occupy the child is a relief for the Stokeses, who constantly struggle with who should watch her and who should work on the house.

"I just want a floor where my little girl can play, and I don't have to worry about her bumping her head," Candace says. She also worries about her baby coming into contact with mold and bacteria left in the storm's wake.

When Chad gets called to his job, work on the house ceases.

At the Stokes home, the teens gut and bleach areas where black mold has begun to grow.

"What they did in a few hours would have taken us months," Candace says.

Slide show

Motivated by their experience with the Stokeses and Smiths, the teens continue their crusade to make a difference down the street, where Jack and Mary Smith live.

Before long, five teens are priming the disabled veteran's walls and knocking down a tool shed that had floated from his back yard to his neighbor's front yard.

Every moment the kids stop working, Jack has a story to tell. There's the one where he shot and ate a 9-foot alligator that was swimming in the canal behind his home.

But there are other, more serious ones. Like how he lit a cigarette upon seeing what the storm did to his house - 10 years after he quit smoking.

And how his wife bought him a child's sippy cup because the shakes that plagued him when he came back from Vietnam returned after the hurricane.

He tames the tremors as best he can to snap pictures while the teens devour a spaghetti lunch his wife made for the teens on their last day of work.

Their name-brand jeans are covered in paint, dust and holes; their bodies peppered with itchy gnat bites.

Glenbard North sophomore Zach Butters, 16, of Carol Stream, begins to number each of his 250 bites, wearing them proudly like battle scars.

Brittany Rice, 18, of Elgin quickly dismisses her broken sunglasses.

"It's so trivial," the Larkin High School senior says. "Here I am fixing a house that used to be an actual home to people and I'm mad about breaking my sunglasses?"

Her friend, Larkin sophomore Lindsey Bandy, 15, of Elgin, has a similar moment of clarity while standing in line for dinner at the church.

"It's not really a problem if there is something I want. I can usually get it," she confesses. "And to see people who have nothing, it makes you think: 'Why do I let little things bother me so much?'"

What bothers the group the most is whether the work they're doing along Second Street really matters.

Before they leave Jack's house, he puts things in perspective for them.

"I was hoping to move back in by December," he says, tears welling in eyes hidden by aviator shades. "But because of the work you kids did, I bet you we'll be back in before summer."

Citizen Street

For the first two days, Etta Williams is only a name on a building permit taped to the window of a home where seven teens and two adult leaders are building a roof.

When the 76-year-old finally arrives, she makes her presence known.

"Hey y'all!" she shouts to the crew that's hammering away overhead.

This message was put on a broken slab of concrete near the steps that once led to the St. Clare Catholic Church and School along the waterfront in Bay St. Louis.

They climb down to meet her and listen as she describes what life was like after the storm.

"At that time, things were so messed up, you didn't know who was coming or where to turn," she says. "People were walking around in a daze. It was at a standstill."

Her daughter, Carolyn, tells the teens that life remains at a standstill for many, including her.

"I go in my own house and I've got 2,001 things to do," she says, adding she has yet to ask for help. "But you look at everything and you don't even want to do it."

"Has it made you stronger?" asks Hersey High School senior Emily Kenney, 18, of Arlington Heights.

"It makes you appreciate how many good people there are," Carolyn answers. "It takes something like this to realize it."

But each time Emily stands back and looks at the roof her crew is working on, there is an ocean of blue tarps covering other storm-battered roofs as far as she can see.

"We're only building one roof out of so many homes that still need them," she says with resignation.

Etta sees things differently.

"If it wasn't for them, this wouldn't even be started," she says.

To thank them, the Williams family cooks a fried catfish meal for the team on their last day - even though they bring bag lunches each day.

"When you go home, you can say you had some good old southern country food," Russell Williams says as he wipes down lawn chairs for the kids.

Annette Williams, Etta's daughter-in-law, tearfully asks the group why they came to Bay St. Louis when there are so many other ways they could have spent spring break.

"I just love to make people smile," says Mike Kropp, 18, of Wheeling, a senior at Hersey.

Before they leave, the students leave their names and addresses with the Williams family and vow to stay in touch.

"I might forget their names," Etta says, as the kids take one last lap around her house to shag stray shingles and forgotten tools. "But I'll always know they were here."

Old Spanish Trail

Even if she wanted to, Lynette Lewallen could never remember the names of every teen who works on her house during the last week of March.

At any given time, a swarm of 20 to 30 kids are on her roof, replacing siding or inside helping her sift through what she has collected from four houses since the storm.

And if they pause for a break, her father, Robert Perkins, 72, is in their ear sharing stories that always return to the day of the storm. He has been living in a trailer with his disabled wife on Lynette's front lawn while she lives in a trailer in her driveway with her husband, two teenage girls and 6-year-old son.

"When you are here every day, it looks worse," Robert says. "They go through with bulldozers and it becomes barren where you knew there was a beautiful house and trees and gardens.

"It's like the storm all over again."

After spending time at Lynette's house, the teens reflect on the experience during a Bible study that some organize on the beach near the Baptist church where they're staying - the place where Lynette was married.

"I think in a way they feel ashamed because they can't do the all the work themselves," says Liz Wauer, 15, a freshman at Downers Grove South.

"Can you imagine what it must be like to say: 'I need help,' and to be vulnerable like that?" answers Tyler Rushing, 15, a freshman at Downers Grove South.

The students realize that just talking to Lynette and listening to Perkins is part of their mission here.

"I think they get a lot out of that," Tyler says. "Just talking to us."

And though she doesn't emerge from her trailer to talk to the kids until the end of the week, Robert's wife, Viola, says she cried for hours as she watched the kids get to work on the first day. And she laughed to herself each time the kids ran from bees flying near the house.

"Whenever I tell anyone that we're raising bees, people look at me like, 'Lady, y'all have gone nuts,'" she says, standing next to a paper plate with sugar that Robert keeps near the front door of their trailer.

It's their way of trying to bring back the bees that pollinated the plants that struggle to bloom around Lynette's house once more.

While installing the roof, the kids accidentally destroy most of the flowers that have returned. So, on their last day, they bring Lynette a bag of flower seeds and a small plant.

"I told myself I wasn't going to cry," Lynette says, apologizing for getting her tears on the shirts of the students she embraces.

But the kids aren't done just yet. They return for a few hours on their last day in town to put together a tire swing for 6-year-old Andrew.

"He didn't know what it was at first," says Mike Paull of Carol Stream, the crew leader. "But he was sitting on the tire when we left.

"It's part of the whole idea of hope and that there is something else, because all kids can remember being on a tire swing and how fun it was."

Gulfside Street

The sound of a bouncing basketball attracts their attention. The sight of an 11-year-old boy shooting hoops by himself compels the teens to join in.

Shooting hoops soon turns into a water fight.

"I don't think he's had as much fun as he did that day in months," says Dan Sherman of Elgin, who serves as the crew leader at Georgette Garth's home, while his sons Eric and Kevin work on other homes.

Dan is right.

"He just wouldn't stop talking about those boys," says Georgette of her grandson, Jaret.

But for as much as Jaret seems to enjoy the teens, he balks at their invitation to check out the work they've done inside his grandmother's home.

Later, they learn why.

Georgette stood in five feet of water for about six hours along with Jaret, her 16-year-old grandson, Jerry, her daughter and her brother inside the house the day the storm hit.

During the storm, Jaret's older brother swam to the yard to bring a canoe inside for his little brother, who could barely keep his head above water.

The boy has yet to step foot inside the house again.

But when he does, his grandmother says, the work the teens accomplished will amaze him.

At first, Bo Cobb, 16, thought Georgette's house was going to be an easy job.

"You look at all these houses and think they're almost done rebuilding, but they're really not," says the Elgin High School sophomore. "Once you go inside, it's torn to pieces."

During the five days they spend here, the team of about nine students and two adults finishes grouting her bathroom floors, installs her washer and dryer, tacks up crown molding in her kitchen and dining room and frames and paints her doors.

But learning how they affect Georgette's life takes a while.

Throughout the week, the teens seem disappointed when they hear other students share stories about the residents they've met.

"Our lady is never home," says Zach Olson, 20, of Streamwood.

Because of Georgette's job as a health care provider, she's gone before the kids arrive each morning and returns after they've left.

But on the teens' last day, she makes time to tell the teens how good it's felt to come home each day to see the progress they've made on her home.

"I don't know what I'm going to do without you kids," she says. "Keep my phone number and call me if you ever want to come back. You've got a house to stay in and a bed in a house that you helped build."

Georgette's favorite part is the front door the teens installed with its oval window. Each time she walks past the decorative glass, she says, she will always see the faces of the kids who put it there.

"There will be a multitude of people opening it with me," she says, pausing for a moment to dab tears. "Because they rebuilt it with me."

How to help

Coming Tuesday: The work behind the work; How volunteer efforts come together in hurricane areas.