(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
BY HARUMENDHAH HELMY
ANCHOR JIM FLINK
The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami swept her away.
Her family thought she was dead, but now, she’s back. CNN shares with us the story of how one Indonesian girl finally gets reunited with her family after seven years.
“Just recently a 15-year-old girl arrived in a small town, telling people she was looking for her mother. She was only eight when the waves swept her away from her mother. The girl not only survived, but the people in town helped reunite her with her parents and relatives, who had given her up for dead. Seven years ago, John, can you believe that?”
The BBC has more details on how the tsunami survivor found her way back -- and what happened to her between 2004 and now.
“Meri Yu[r]anda turned up at a cafe in Meulaboh, Aceh, remembering only the name of her grandfather, Ibrahim. Someone at the cafe knew a man by that name and got in touch. Meri says she was beaten and forced to work as a beggar before being set free last week.”
Meanwhile -- the folks at Fox and Friends disagree with one another -- is Meri’s return a Christmas miracle, or is there something more?
Steve Doocy: “What a miracle.”
Juliet Huddy: “It’s a Christmas miracle!”
Brian Kilmeade: “I just think there’s so much more to the story. I’m not saying I don’t believe it necessarily, but I don’t know if we have the whole story.”
Juliet Huddy: “I was a little skeptical too at first I have to be honest... ‘Cause you hear these things and it’s a little bit, yeah... We’ll do some investigating.”
But for a writer for Jezebel -- this was a miracle. She explains how Meri’s family was able to recognize their long-lost daughter.
“Every year around this time there are dozens of news stories on various "Christmas miracles," but now something so amazing has happened that it will make every other miracle this season pale in comparison … She'd grown so much ... but they say they knew it was her because of a mole and a scar above her eyebrow that she's had since she was six.”
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people in fourteen different countries and left at least one million displaced. Indonesia, nearest to the quake’s epicenter, was struck the hardest.
