NAMPA -- A survivor of the earthquake in Haiti has returned to Nampa.
You first met NNU grad Katie Zook when we interviewed her from her hospital bed in Miami.
Zook was in Haiti on a two-year mission with the Free Methodist Church when the earthquake hit, and the building she was in collapsed.
We caught up with Zook again on her first trip back to Nampa.
We were there when Katie was reunited with one of her rescuers.
“I feel blessed," said Kelly Perkins.
Blessed to see Katie Zook in one piece.
Kelly Perkins was in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He was on a short term mission to drill wells, and that's how he met Katie.
"The day of the earthquake we had devotionals together and I pretty well told everybody if I had a daughter this would be the gal I'd want," said Perkins.
Hours later he would be pulling her from the rubble of a four-story building.
"Last time I saw her down there we put her on the helicopter," said Kelly.
Until their reunion Tuesday.
Katie and Kelly each remember different aspects of those harrowing hours in Haiti.
"It was painful. I remember it being painful. It was kind of like I kept telling myself that it was the same as doing the ice bath that I always did in track in high school. I just kept trying to put myself there mentally because then I could deal with the pain better," said Katie.
Humor also helped Katie survive the wait to be rescued. A Haitian friend just learning English tried to keep her spirits up.
"He was standing there with a flashlight going, 'We gonna get you outta there baby. We comin' for you, we comin' for you. You just hold on, we gonna get you out of there!' And I am buried under all this concrete laughing," said Katie.
That despite a crushed left side, fractured ribs, collapsed lung, and spine fractures.
"She was in a lot of pain and I knew that. And it's not like being here in the United States where you're gonna call 911," said Kelly.
So Kelly and the other rescuers did what they could.
"I looked over and saw a big suitcase there and I unzipped it and we used that. We did what we had to do," said Kelly.
And they got Katie on the long road to a hospital in Miami where she stayed for weeks. Her healing continues today but she and Kelly can't get the people still in misery out of their minds.
"It's so much different to be a Haitian going through this than to be in my position because a lot of Haitians didn't get this whirlwind of care. It's hard to watch these people that already had nothing and now they have less than nothing," said Katie. "That's part of why I want to speak, to know that I was saved from this event , it wasn't just because God wants me to go home and hole up with my family and never go back to Haiti."
Kelly is going back next week, and Katie says, Lord willing, she'll go back someday. Both hope to emulate the resilience they admire in the Haitian people, as they move forward from a day they will never forget.
Katie hopes people will not forget that Haiti still needs our help.
