A salvor for Sandy.

• Position: Western

In early November, while watching TV reports of the damage wrought by Superstorm Sandy, Tim Ferris got a call from SMIT Salvage Americas Inc. The Houston-based contractor wanted Bostic-based Defiant Marine Inc.--a marine salvage company Ferris founded in 2010--to send a crew to New York City to pump out the Montague Tube, which carries the subway under the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Ferris and a Defiant diver drove through the night in the company's 38-foot recreation vehicle, outfitted to be a mobile command post. Upon arriving, they found the tube filled with water from track to ceiling--roughly 85 feet--for almost a mile.

Ferris, 36, and three of his four employees are certified deep-sea divers and trained salvors. Past missions included refloating grounded vessels off the coast of Greenland and on the Parana River in Argentina. Defiant helped remove pollutants from the water after a tanker ran aground in Italy. Typical projects last four to six months, and the company grossed $2.2 million in 2011. In addition to its employees, it hires independent contractors when needed.

SMIT tapped Defiant because clearing the tube was similar to pumping out a ship. "The subway became that same environment--stale seawater mixed with diesel fuel and rotting organic material," Ferris says. He and three employees placed stainless-steel hydraulic pumps--capable of sucking 200,000 gallons of water an hour--at the tube's lowest point. They moved water up to a sump where 12-inch diesel pumps pushed it into the East River. Ferris and his crew spent seven days in the tube. Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers were able to repair the line a bit at a time as the water receded.

Ferris grew up on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound, but his parents moved the family to a farm in Bostic in the early 1990s. After high school, he trained as a diesel mechanic, then earned welding certifications before graduating from Diver's Institute of Technology in Seattle in 2002. He spent most of the next decade working for other marine salvage companies. The farm in Bostic serves as the headquarters of not only Defiant but also Blue Ridge Distilling Co., a distillery Ferris started in 2010 that makes vodka and whiskey.

The number of properties sold in Ashe, Avery and Watauga counties through October had already surpassed the annual totals of the previous three years. 2008 1,284 2009 1,033 2010 938 2011 1,015 2012 1,054 * Through October Source: High...