Hidden in the news of flooded towns, washed-out highways and ruined homes are countless tales of ingenuity, dedication and compassion. Throughout these flooded areas, people put aside their own worries and set out to help. Accounts of aid rendered are many: People who put out signs asking for help sandbagging and had dozens of strangers join in. Restaurants that gave pounds of free food to volunteers. The Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps going to Baraboo to perform and ending up sandbagging all night. And those roving gangs of church ladies with their parade of Crock-Pots have been spotted in various locales.

Few want to take credit for what they've done. In fact, the people cited here unfailingly pointed to others they wanted to praise in lieu of themselves. Certainly, each of them is representative of the many residents who have taken on similar tasks, all of whom count as heroes of the floods.

"There's no way to estimate how many people are helping out" said Jefferson County Board chair Sharon Schmeling, after ticking off a dozen examples. "None of them want to say they are doing good works. Everyone everywhere is pitching in doing what they can."

Grandma's slumber party: Pat Ostrander, Muscoda

When the Red Cross arrived in Muscoda with busloads of evacuees from nearby Avoca, the workers were surprised to find about two dozen people standing outside Riverdale High School waiting to help.

Dodgeville resident Gerry Gilmour, the Red Cross volunteer running the shelter, remembers wondering: "How did you know we'd need you?"

"We'd heard about the evacuation while listening to the radio for a weather report and we knew they'd be coming here — so we just showed up," explains Pat Goplin, a high school teacher in Muscoda. "I have no doubt that if the roles were reversed, the folks from Avoca would be here. We're in rural Wisconsin, so seven miles away still means you are a neighbor."

Being a neighbor, for Muscoda residents, meant taking 40-some strangers and their pets — several dozen dogs, cats, hamsters and a bird were evacuated — into their homes. It also meant stopping by the school to drop off everything from deviled eggs to children's toys for the people remaining in the shelter.

Among those who showed up to help was Pat Ostrander, a widow who owns a large old home in Muscoda.

"I heard the Red Cross was setting up at the school and went down to see what could be done," Ostrander said. "I met three elderly ladies from Avoca, two were using walkers, and I looked at the cots and imagined them sleeping in all this commotion. I realized that if I could talk one of them into coming home with me, the other two would come, too." She succeeded.

Ostrander's grandkids were tickled when they heard about grandma having a sleepover, as she called it. "We had a few laughs and ate ice cream," Ostrander said. "We did just fine."

An avid gardener, Ostrander is now looking "down the road" to her next volunteer stint. "Once we get rid of this water, then we can plant some flowers."

Records and lives saved: Skip and Judy Watkins, Rock Springs

Rock Springs volunteer Fire Capt. Skip Watkins got up early on June 8 to prep 350 chickens for barbecuing at the annual firefighters' celebration. But weather reports soon made it clear those chickens needed to go in a freezer and Watkins, his family, co-workers and neighbors began an exhausting day of filling and piling sandbags.

Thirty-some hours later, at 3 a.m. as floodwater continued to rise in Rock Springs, they came to the crushing realization that their work was largely futile.

"That's when we figured we needed to switch gears and get things up and out," says Watkins. "Water was rising four to five inches per hour."

Accompanied by his wife, Judy, and 16-year-old son Sebastian, Watkins and other firefighters took out their personal boats and began rescuing residents. Once the people were safe, they realized there was more saving to do — the town's books and records were in jeopardy.

As water poured in to the community center, they moved Rock Springs' books, tax rolls, maps, a voting machine and other records from the public library and clerk's office that were on the first floor.

"We got about 90 percent of it," Watkins said. "We even had to move the books a second time as the water kept coming up."

But most importantly, no lives were lost, despite the destruction of much of the town.

"Everything in town is just gone," an exhausted Watkins said. "Basements have caved in, buildings have shifted off their foundations, houses had up to 8 feet of water on their first floors."

The Watkins family, who own a small construction company, put all their personal work on hold for a week. "That's part of the job," Watkins said. "To help wherever you can."

Flume river: Dave Tracey, Pardeeville

As water rose in Park Lake in Pardeeville, officials realized pressure on the village's dams was building. If the water level was not lowered, the dams could breach and drain the lake in a fashion similar to what occurred in Lake Delton — taking homes and businesses tumbling with it.

So the people of Pardeeville manufactured a river out of 4,000 feet of water-main bag plastic surrounded by a bank made from sandbags and black construction plastic.

When that overflowed on Friday, June 13, they created a sandbag dike on Highway 22 to channel water back to the homemade river.

It takes a while to get Pardeeville public works director Dave Tracey to reveal that the ingenious idea to build this artificial stream was sparked by memories from his days working at the Department of Natural Resources teaching summer camp kids about designing stream channels to shuttle water for trout-habitat restoration.

That's because he's too busy crediting everyone who helped design, plan and build the gigantic slip-and-slide spillway across Highway 22: electrician Paul Maguire, Pardeeville Assistant Fire Chief Lloyd Miller, Columbia County sheriff's Sgt. Richard Hoege (the village has dubbed it Hoege's River), campers filling sandbags and the work-release and Columbia Correctional Institution inmates who helped place those bags and clean up.

"We discussed that we needed to do something to get the pressure off the hydro dam," Tracey said. "There's no one person who did anything better than anybody else — everybody gave so much time and effort. My main management skill is that I listen to people with good ideas."

Village President Barry Pufahl says he's very proud of the brain trust Tracey formed with Miller and Hoege to devise the makeshift flume and the dike: "We averted disaster. They did it — they saved us from a blowout like Lake Delton ... and Dave was here all the time, exhausted but he kept working."

Guardian of the bridge: Tom Beane, Jefferson

Tom Beane spent six days guarding a bridge until the National Guard came in to spell him on Tuesday.

Beane is a member of Jefferson County Emergency Communications, a group of volunteers who help local law enforcement.

During the flooding, they keep residents off closed roads and bridges that can be hazardous when the depth of water and road conditions are not obvious.

So Beane's group kept drivers away and directed traffic to safe alternate routes.

Both bridges in Jefferson eventually closed, creating traffic headaches and even separating some children who had been playing with friends on the opposite side of a river from their families, Beane said.

"I gave them my business card and told them to have their parents call me, and I'll give them a route to get to you," he said.

Guarding a bridge or road isn't exciting work, and a reporter witnessed one man raising his voice at Beane, stridently griping about not being allowed across the bridge where Beane was stationed. Beane kept his cool and simply described the alternate route, despite the fact that he'd been working 12-hour-plus guard shifts for nearly a week.

"We've got to keep our composure out there," Beane said. "The ones that are frustrated, I fully sympathize with them being upset with a long detour and gas at $4 a gallon."

As for Beane, he wants to thank the woman and her daughter who came by his bridge one day and dropped off a steaming hot pork sandwich.

Overnight Ducks drivers: William Halbach and Kyle Morse, Baraboo

When the Baraboo River raged over its banks, making evacuation from nearby homes dicey, many Baraboo residents looked out their windows and saw the classic symbol of Wisconsin Dells tourism — World War II-era Ducks — coming to their rescue.

Behind the wheels of two of the land and water vehicles called upon by the Sauk County Sheriff's Department to aid rescue efforts were college students William Halbach and Kyle Morse.

Instead of shuttling tourists for their summer jobs, the pair ended up transporting emergency personnel to evacuate Baraboo. A total of eight Ducks from Original Wisconsin Ducks and three from Dells Army Ducks rescued an estimated 200 people and some dogs too, says Original Ducks general manager Dan Gavinski. They even performed search missions, finding several lost children, and evacuated a nursing home.

Duck driving conditions were terrible. The first person rescued was an elderly woman, and the Baraboo River water was so deep and swift they had to maneuver the Duck within five feet of her door, put a life jacket on her, tie her to a rope and have rescue workers climb into the water just to get her aboard, Gavinski said.

After six hours of such rescues, the Ducks drivers were finally having dinner after 10 p.m. at the Baraboo Fire Station, when the department asked to keep two drivers and their Ducks overnight in case an emergency arose. Halbach and Morse, both of whom hail from the area, volunteered to stay on. They were dispatched around 1 a.m. to a mobile home park near Sauk City to help people who were stuck get to safety.

Asked why he volunteered to work for more than 24 hours, Morse, a 19-year-old from the Dells, responds: "I'm going to school to be a firefighter-paramedic so I figured I should stick around."

Halbach, a UW-Madison sophomore from Baraboo, was driving the Duck that rescued his neighbors. He also evacuated one of his elementary school teachers, who commented that he "was a lot bigger than he used to be."