Fifteen men and women from the Capital Region returned Sunday from a mission to help Haiti. The only professional in their group was a doctor. The rest were volunteers who touched the lives of thousands in an effort to make life just a little better. Our Erin Vannella has more on the story of two volunteers whose photos and memories tell all.

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"Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents," said Dean Rueckert. "The streets are filthy, there's open sewage everywhere, they don't have good water and the temperature is a 100 degrees."

Rueckert and 14 other volunteers saw it first-hand. The group flew down to Haiti for a week with medical and construction supplies to heal a broken people. They rebuilt an orphanage and set up a medical clinic.

"Dr. Paeglow from the Prayer and Healing Center in Albany decided he would go along and make it a medical trip," said Rueckert. "During the seven or eight days we were there, we saw almost 600 patients and treated them for everything from asthma to urinary tract infections, open wounds and lots of ear infections."

The group arrived with basic medications and a pharmacist to prescribe them. For some, they relied on quick reading, inexpensive urine tests. Others couldn't be helped.

"There was one woman who wasn't even coherent," recalled Rueckert. "She had been under the rubble for four days when someone found her and a neighbor brought her hoping that we could do something psychologically for her."

Volunteer George Tockmakis assembled water filters for the Haitians. He said they didn't realize water is one thing making them sick.

"We went to a town just a little outside of Port-au-Prince and they hadn't seen anyone for four months come into that area," said Tockmakis.

It was Tockmakis's second trip to Haiti, bringing help and hope. He said it's a short term fix, but one both men agree was worth the effort.

"I brought my guitar and started singing and they started singing back to us," said Tockmakis. "And you could see that hope in the people, that there is joy. They're not all lost, so they haven't given up."

"We brought passion or compassion, rather," said Rueckert. "We touched these people's lives just for a short period of time. I think that's the biggest impact we had."