Tester calls himself a “car farmer,” a title earned after restoring more than a dozen vintage vehicles, many from his favorite decade, the 1930s.

When Montana lineman Mark Brastrup learned that Superstorm Sandy had delivered a staggering blow to the East Coast’s electrical grid, he said goodbye to his wife and four children and went to work.

Sandy Stash first came to Butte in 1989, at the age of 30, to assume a difficult job guiding Atlantic Richfield’s response to finding itself liable for the country’s largest Superfund complex, which ...