Judithanne Scourfield McLauchlan, a political science professor at USF St. Pete, lost nearly everything in her Madeira Beach home after Hurricane Helene.

Cleaning up the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s storm surge was an “incredibly difficult time” for McLauchlan.

However, McLauchlan and her family didn’t have to deal with it alone. She had the help of colleagues and students, who she said made a tragic loss feel slightly more manageable.

When she didn’t know where to start, she said the “super volunteers” stepped up.

“I had friends who came in who just took charge to help get organized and helped coordinate the other volunteers,” she said. “The support, just the shoulders to cry on, was so overwhelming.”

She said the house, which was built in 1956 and never flooded before, got around four feet of water.

The family has owned the house for around 20 years, McLauchlan said. She lived in it with her husband, Ramsay McLauchlan, a middle school civics teacher in Pinellas County, and her daughter, Peggy McLauchlan, who is attending college in Wisconsin.

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All of the contents of McLauchlan’s home had to be emptied into her yard and put into a pile that the volunteers called “Mount Trashmore.”

McLauchlan said she was relieved when she came back home after Milton and saw her house hadn’t suffered any additional damage.

She said she was worried the items in the backyard pile would become “projectiles” during Milton and cause more damage to any houses nearby.

“I had been feeling really down after Helene,” she said. “But the reality was the house was still standing. We still had a house that could potentially be repaired.”

Related: PHOTOS: USF Tampa before and after Hurricane Milton

Some volunteers helped by loaning their trucks to transport the few items that could be salvaged and others donated boxes and cleaning supplies, she said.

Christina Diamond, who was McLauchlan’s student in 2006, helped McLauchlan with laundry and brought food and drinks for the volunteers.

Diamond said she had kept in touch with McLauchlan through Facebook, where she saw that McLauchlan’s home had been flooded. 

“I immediately knew that the only thing to do was to reach out to her and see what I could do to help her,” Diamond said.

Susan Toler, associate dean of USF St. Pete’s College of the Arts and Sciences, was one of the old friends who stepped up to help McLauchlan.

The pair has worked together for over 20 years. Toler said because St. Pete often gets the “front end of the storm,” the community is what keeps people there. 

Related: USF student opens Orlando home to friends during Helene evacuation

“After the storm happened, it was like peeling the layer of an onion where, day after day, you became more aware of the level of destruction and the impact and trauma it had on people around you,” she said. “I think it drew the community.”

Diamond said seeing students and faculty members working to help McLauchlan was a reminder of why communities are so important.

“We really just need to rely on each other,” she said. “I think the state and the government can only do so much.”

The support from friends and colleagues was “absolutely essential,” McLauchlan said.

“We just couldn’t have gotten through that phase without the help of so many who stepped up to help in a multitude of ways,” she said.