( CNN ) -- Sandy disrupted the lives of millions of people when it turned toward the Northeast United States and morphed into a superstorm . Most will return to their routine in time , but some lives are forever changed . Among those people , here are three of their stories : . Emergency : A desperate rush to save lives in a hospital . The doctors , nurses and staff at the New York University 's Langone Medical Center acted fast Monday evening when their hospital basement flooded , cutting off power and the roof-top generators choked under Sandy 's torrential rain . How you can help . Ventilators giving newborns breath failed , lights dimmed and elevators in the 15-floor hospital stopped . Dr. Andrew Brotman described a desperate rush to find other hospitals to take their 260 patients and ambulances to take them there along streets flooded by the superstorm . The hospital was empty of patients by 11 a.m. Tuesday , but Brotman and his colleagues were left with the challenge of reclaiming it from Sandy 's fury . Read more about the fast-thinking efforts of the hospital staff . Rescue : Police chief aids hundreds who stayed behind . One of Ralph Verdi 's jobs as police chief of Little Ferry , New Jersey , is to make sure residents heed warnings when danger approaches . But many of the 10,000 residents who rode out Irene last year -- the first hurricane to make landfall in New Jersey in 108 years -- might have seen Sandy as another overhyped storm . When Sandy lived up to her billing and flooded Little Ferry and two neighboring towns , Verdi 's job became the rescue of residents trapped in the top floors and roofs of their homes by 6-feet-deep water . Rescuers under Verdi 's direction scrambled to save a Bergen County woman who waved and shouted from her front porch . The chief has been too busy to count how many people have been whisked from rising water , but he knew it was in the hundreds -- with many others , some in pajamas and barefoot , calling for help . Read more about the rescue efforts in hard-hit New Jersey . Death : She answered the call of the sea and history . While the patients at Brotman 's hospital and the people Verdi rescued all survived , Sandy took the life of Claudene Christian . Christian , 42 , was living her dream as a deckhand on a replica of the historic HMS Bounty before giant waves , churned up by Hurricane Sandy , overtook the three-masted , 180-foot sailing vessel off North Carolina 's coast early Monday . While 14 crew members made it to lifeboats , waves washed Christian , Capt . Robin Waldridge and another crew members overboard . The third crew member eventually swam to a lifeboat . The U.S. Coast Guard staged a daring helicopter rescue : They flew into the hurricane 's outer bands and plucked the surviving crew members from two lifeboats . Christian 's body was later pulled from the sea , but Waldridge remained missing Tuesday . Read more about the adventurous life of Claudene Christian . Elizabeth Cohen , Ashley Frantz and Thom Patterson contributed to this report .
Emergency : Dr. Claudene Christian describes a frantic rush to evacuate two patients . Rescue : Andrew Brotman job was to warn people to flee , then to rescue those who did n't listen . Death : Andrew Brotman was living her dream as a deckhand on the HMS Bounty .