She digs through Helene's wreckage to return people's memories

A year after Hurricane Helene, Mandy Wallace and the MountainTrue cleanup crew are painstakingly separating wedding photos, heirlooms, and keepsakes from the flood debris in western North Carolina — and reuniting them with survivors. The work is slow and muddy and deeply human. Sometimes recovery isn't about rebuilding walls; it's about returning a grandmother's photo album.