Lisa and Vito Cardinale’s wedding 17 years ago was perfect.

The two childhood friends tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in Brooklyn surrounded by family and friends.

Laughs were shared. Both the bride and groom wore white. Photos were taken.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” Cardinale said.

When Superstorm Sandy struck the Eastern Seaboard on Oct. 29, the couple’s family home in Southeast Annadale in Staten Island, N.Y., like countless others, was flooded. The barrage of rising flood waters and debris damaged their home’s first floor where two of the Cardinale children sleep. Sandy’s strong winds blew off the garage doors, damaging everything the family had stored in there.

The family lost prized possessions — mementos from years gone by, including school photos of the Cardinale children and photos from the wedding.

“My little son, his bedroom was the worst really, he lost all his furniture, his clothes, his toys,” Cardinale said of her 7-year-old.

Some of the family’s photos were found washed up on shore in Staten Island. A reader sent the photos along with others that had been salvaged to a local newspaper who in turn posted them online. Eventually Cardinale was able track them down. But they were damaged.

After hearing about the photos Brooklyn-based freelance creative director Lee Kelly contacted Cardinale and offered to restore her photos free.

“Because I live here, it’s so immediate, I have the resources that are here, I knew that I could do something now, not three months from now,” Kelly said.

Inspired to help more Sandy victims, Kelly reached out to her contacts in the photography and art fields and founded CARE for Sandy, the Cherished Albums Restoration Effort, on Nov. 10, where volunteer photo retouchers are offering their digital restoration services for free to affected families.

CARE held its first scanning event Nov. 20 in the Rockaways area of Queens, one of the hardest hit areas in the storm. Already 125 photo retouchers from around the world, including Canada, Ukraine and Brazil, have contacted Kelly to help out. She plans to hold a scanning event once a week throughout New York and New Jersey where families can have up to 100 of their favourite photos scanned, digitally retouched and then emailed back to the family. Families have the chance to pick their “Most Cherished” photo so the retoucher knows which photo to work on first.

Restorations can take up to 20 hours depending on the severity of damage, Kelly said.

Sponsors like GoPreserve and Virb are providing Kelly’s team with scanning equipment, free web hosting and digital archival space. Bestype Imaging will be providing free photographic prints.

Kevin Dolan, a retired firefighter with FDNY, who lives in the Rockaways took seven of his photos to CARE’s scanning day on Nov. 20.

His salvaged photos included his own wedding photo dating back 40 years that had been damaged in the Sandy flooding. Dolan’s home — two houses away from the Atlantic Ocean — was flooded with seven feet (2.1 metres) of seawater and debris. While his wife Irene went to stay with their daughter a few blocks away on the night of the storm, Dolan decided to stay inside his home to ride it out.

“The debris went through my window, which is a picture window, causing damage on the first floor … just a lot of personal items,” said Dolan, who still doesn’t have heat. “But we’re here, we’re talking, right?

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“I was very happy when I heard they could restore some of the photos that I had that did get water damaged.”

Encouraged by CARE’s efforts Dolan is drying out other family photos, and plans to bring them to CARE’s next scanning event. His wife, who is staying with family in Long Island for the time being, comes over each day to help her husband cleanup.

“When she comes tomorrow her job is going to be picking out photos to get restored. That makes her very happy knowing that we can save a lot of them,” Dolan said. “I know my wife will run out and get new frames.”