Tsunami Love Stories

TSUNAMI BRINGS DOCTOR, SURVIVOR TOGETHER
Israeli couple returns to Thailand for memorial services, gets engaged
Updated: 6:32 a.m. ET Dec. 27, 2005, MSNBC.COM
PHUKET, Thailand - In the chaos after Asia’s killer tsunami, a volunteer Israeli doctor and a badly injured survivor fell in love.

A year later, Israeli-born businessman Ron Bombiger held Dr. Dorit Nitzan’s hand and proposed on Tuesday in the Phuket hospital room where they first met.

“Dori, in front of all these people, will you marry me?,” asked Bombiger, 49, as beaming nurses looked on in the room adorned with red roses and petals on the bed in the shape of a heart.

She whispered in his ear, they kissed and exchanged engagement rings to loud cheers and applause.

The two met days after the tsunami shattered Bombiger’s hotel on Kamala Beach on the Thai tourist island of Phuket.

Thais gave Bombiger, who was visiting from Los Angeles, a blanket and rushed him to the island’s main Bangkok Hospital with a serious leg injury.

Nitzan, a member of the Israeli team sent to Thailand to help survivors, visited Bombiger as he spent the next few weeks in room 432, recovering from six operations on his right thigh.

They discovered they had lived as children in the same town in Israel.

“We call it the ’wave of love’”, Bombiger said of the tragedy that brought them together. “This wave came in and I found this girl I love and want to spend the rest of my life with.”

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THULISHI, THE MIRACLE BABY OF MIAMI BEACH
BY EMMELINE TAN, PICS BY K.T.GOH from thestar.com.my

SHE was just 22 days old, fast asleep on a mattress, when the tsunami waves hit the shoreline of Miami Beach in Penang.

Before her parents could do anything, she had disappeared from view.

But miraculously, the next round of waves brought her back.

This is baby Thulishi, who now just loves being in the water, under the watchful eyes of her parents, father Suppiah Alagappan and mother Annalmary Lurdu.

Statistically, Thulishi is just one of the many lives affected by the region's most horrific natural disaster. But in her smile, she radiates hope.

"SHE must have been saved for a reason. Maybe she would be the next Mother Teresa or something," said Alagappan of his miracle baby who celebrated her first birthday on Dec 4.

The tiny tot is now a chubby, curly-haired toddler who stares wide-eyed at visitors.

Her family has been given a unit at the tsunami transit homes in Batu Ferringhi and Thulishi spends most of her time in a white cot filled with toys from well-wishers at the cafe where she nearly lost her life a year ago.

Lulled to sleep by the sound of waves daily, Thulishi shows no fear of the water and loves playing in the sea.

“She keeps tugging our sleeves to take her for a walk on the beach when she wakes up. And she's such an early riser!” said Alagappan, 57, who lovingly calls his daughter darling....


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