Five days after most hatchlings had fled this nest, Tilton and Lara Griffiths, the center’s Sea Turtle Project coordinator at the time, were digging through sand and eggshells to count the eggs that had failed to hatch.

Suddenly, Griffiths dug up a tiny, seemingly lifeless turtle and handed it to Tilton. But as Tilton cradled the small body in the palm of her hand, she got a surprise. “It started to move!” the 63-year-old retired executive said.

Gently holding the juvenile loggerhead sea turtle, Tilton raced to the ocean. She placed the baby turtle on the edge of the waves. And with awe, she watched as it swam out to sea.

“I can’t tell you how it felt,” Tilton said, with excitement still in her voice. “It was my first experience of seeing a baby turtle.”

As she retold this story in her comfortable Wilmington Park home, Tilton noted that she’d read many articles about endangered sea turtles. And she knew a hatchling’s odds of surviving were grim.

“Depending on what article you read, only one of out 1,000 — or even one out of 10,000 — survive on average,” she said later.

So as she watched this tiny turtle’s small, red-brown flippers pushing through the waves toward the open sea, Tilton was ecstatic.

“This was a real big deal for me,” she recounted. She had saved the life of an endangered turtle; she would remember this for the rest of her life.

It’s an old scenario: When folks retire, often they find a new interest — gardening, golf, maybe photography.

But when Tilton retired, she discovered something else — a passion for sea turtles. And as she tells it, working to save them is not just a passing interest; it is her mission.

She has begun reading Carl Safina’s “Voyage of the Turtle,” also a textbook on marine science and other books about these large, blunt-jawed creatures that have lived in the oceans for some 200 million years.

As she discovered sea turtles, Tilton has also become a “super-volunteer” at the Science Center, staffers say. She created a new design this year for the center’s downstairs aquarium area. She mans the center’s touch tank twice a week. (The saltwater basin holds live crabs, sand dollars and whelks. And Tilton teaches children and adults about them — and how to hold them with care.)

During the May 1 to Oct. 31 sea turtle nesting seasons, Tilton spends long hours walking Tybee beaches to look for nests and endangered turtles.

She patrols at dawn, looking for a bulldozer-like track that indicates a female turtle may have crawled ashore at night to lay her eggs.

Also in an activity that is not part of the Science Center’s Sea Turtle Project, Tilton sometimes “nest-sits.” With a few friends, she has sat in the dark on the sand, waiting and watching for fat, white turtle eggs to hatch.

Tilton and her husband, actor Ted Henning, moved from Atlanta to Savannah in 2003 to retire. She had held a high-pressure but fulfilling job as co-owner of Events Group, Inc., a company that designed corporate events for CNN, Headline News and many other firms.

But seeking a quieter life, Henning and Tilton moved to Wilmington Park. To keep active, they volunteered — Henning as a Telfair Museum of Art docent and Tilton at the Science Center.

But, until she started working at the Science Center, Tilton didn’t know much about Tybee’s beach ecology or the endangered turtles that nest on the Georgia coast.

“I knew sea turtles existed,” Tilton said, but not much more.

Why spend so much energy on endangered turtles? Tilton had a ready answer. “When I get involved with something, I give it everything,” she said. “My heart goes into it.”

After all, “If we can do one little bit to help these nests come up — and if the babies will swim away in the ocean — then maybe these creatures will survive,” Tilton said.

During that summer of 2005, Tilton, her 21-year-old niece, Caitlin Marcotte, and others gathered beside one of Tybee’s turtle nests.

As the group watched, the baby turtles emerged.

“I saw them bubble out of the sand,” Tilton said. And when some of the baby turtles began following her flashlight, she used that light to lead them into the ocean.

The experience was exhilarating, she continued. “To see them boogeying down to the water is amazing.” And as she and her niece stood in shallow water, they could feel a wave of turtles “coming over our feet.” As the hatchlings made their way to the open sea, she and Marcotte came close to tears.

So Tilton was hopeful. If these smallest of sea turtles could hatch and swim to the ocean, maybe a new generation of turtles could beat the odds and live, she said.

To learn about volunteering, call the Tybee Island Marine Science Center at 786-5917 or visit its Web site at www.tybeemsc.org/turtles.