I just approached/interviewed someone for the first time on odesk. He seemed really promising, he had good flash skills and feedback was good.
He did contact me after a few days and said he would get back to me with a quote, a few days later and I am still waiting
His hourly rate seemed a bit low to me, so I was going to offer him more, but now if he contacts me I think I wont bother going with him as I stated communication and "keeping me in the loop" was really important.
My current flash developer I work with is an ***** so I'm on a quest to find a new one and no I am not paying him peanuts either. I did not find him online though.
I've used freelancer.com a few times, majority of the developers are pretty bad, but the developers with a higher pay rate are not too bad in most cases. You just got to be careful that there not just showing you a fake portfolio.
My HTML/PHP guy though is pretty good but I found him in a forum, where he was just offering advice with programming. That's probably the best way to find a developer is to hang out in forums where developers hang out.
Although, don't hang-out in forums purely related to their field of expertise.
Shoemoney had a a recent article about hiring good developers from forums.