The rescuers and the rescued talk about everything that happened in minutes and hours. Those measurements are all that counted in the harrowing days after Hurricane Katrina.

At 3 p.m. Sept. 1, Tammy and Blair Cohen decided to rescue a group of 33 people stranded at a boys home in New Orleans. Two days later, the Cohens and a crew of five left Marietta in three vans and a truck loaded with gas and water.

As they left that Saturday afternoon, boys from the group home were being plucked off a rooftop and taken to a shelter at Louis Armstrong International Airport outside New Orleans. The Cobb rescuers got to the airport 12 hours later. With an armed police escort, they were in and out of the airport in eight minutes. By 3 p.m. Sunday, they were all back safely in Cobb.

Tammy Cohen, president of a background screening company, and evacuees Claude and Beverly Wilkerson described the rescue operation from their haven of Cobb.

Beverly's sister, Marlene Murphy, works with Cohen, a former New Orleans resident, at Infomart in Marietta.

After Murphy told Cohen the Wilkersons were stranded, she broke down in tears. Beverly had called from a rooftop the night before and was terrified about conditions in her native city.

"I didn't think about how we would get to them," Cohen said. "I just knew that we would."

Cohen called a congressman, the Coast Guard and a captain at the Naval Air Station in Marietta. Meanwhile, Claude Wilkerson's brother, Ron, an evacuee staying at his daughter's home in Florida, called Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

Landrieu's son and Wilkerson's great-nephew had played baseball together. Plans came together quickly to retrieve the group marooned at the Waldo Burton Boys Home.

Claude Wilkerson has worked 19 years as program director at the home for at-risk boys, ages 9-17. Beverly Wilkerson has been a counselor for nine years. After residents were ordered to evacuate, all but six of the 28 boys at the home were picked up by their families. The Wilkersons told director Milly Joyner they would stay and care for the remaining boys.

The Wilkersons, who live at the home, felt safe in the sturdy limestone building, which was constructed in 1922. It has served as a storm shelter for more than 50 years. Fourteen family members joined them to ride out the storm.

After the hurricane blew through, the home was dry and intact. The Wilkersons thought all they had ahead of them was cleaning up the grounds.

But they awoke Aug. 30 to find themselves surrounded by water. They had supplies of food, water and a generator, but no way to evacuate. The family took in 11 more people, including an employee and her family and neighbors seeking shelter from rising water and crime.

"We were not afraid of the water," Claude Wilkerson said. "What we feared is what we saw going on outside, the looting and assaults."

While Beverly Wilkerson kept a calm front for the boys and her family inside the home, Claude tried to find an escape route. He wandered a few blocks away, testing the depth of the water with a stick. He saw two bodies in the street and retreated.

"I couldn't take my eyes away at first," he said. "I thought these things happen to someone else and somewhere else."

Three days after the storm, the generator went out and Wilkerson climbed up on the roof to get a signal on his cellphone. His wife joined him and eventually they got through to his brother in Florida and her sister in west Cobb. Their situation was deteriorating, and they pleaded for help.

Beverly Wilkerson reunited with her sister, who was in the Cobb rescue caravan, at the New Orleans airport. There was no time for hugs, she said, because other evacuees were desperate to get into their vans.

The reunion continued after Ron Wilkerson arrived from Florida a week ago. The family filled a house in Marietta, one of three houses supplied to the evacuees by the Cobb YWCA.

Executive Director Sandra Boyce said Cohen, former president of the YWCA board, called her about housing the evacuees the day before she left for New Orleans. The YWCA had three transitional houses available. One house needed renovating and the others cleaning. Volunteers from Awtrey, Emerson, Westwood and Kennesaw First Baptist churches fixed up the homes, with help from a flooring and air conditioning companies, in one day.

The group from the boys home moved in Monday. Eight have left to live with family in Virginia and Tennessee. The Wilkersons have no idea how long they will remain. The couple plans to take care of the boys, now enrolled in schools, until they get in touch with their families. Some of the Wilkersons may relocate to Cobb.

"I don't believe there is a mean person in Marietta. Everyone has been so nice to us," Claude Wilkerson said. "I can't think of a better place for us to have landed."