FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — As COVID-19 spread across the globe, it dramatically stopped a Flowery Branch film art director in her tracks - 8,500 miles from home.
Last October, Sarah Fic journeyed to Kolkata, India.
She was on a film production assignment and expected to be home in Flowery Branch early in the New Year. Then COVID-19 raced across India, and the country came to a grinding halt.
Borders closed, flights were cancelled, and people stayed closeted in their homes. For the next six months, Fic was trapped.
She said she tried everything to get home, but got nowhere.
“It was chaotic," she said. "It got to a point where it was about hopeless. I just felt like - I was starting to think I was going to be here forever."
And getting home was critical. Her mom, Lisa Robbins, is a cancer patient, and her brother Josh has Down Syndrome and autism.
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When 11Alive learned that Fic was stranded in Kolkata, we immediately reached out to the senior executives at United Airlines. Within just a few hours, they reached out to Fic directly in India and got her booked on a flight home.
Today she arrived.
11Alive photojournalist Stephen Boissy was at Hartsfield-Jackson as Fic reunited with her mom - a full 10 months after leaving Flowery Branch.
For Fic's mom, the wait for her return was finally over.
It was the hardest thing, they said, they have ever had to go through.
And it was a reunion they will long remember with Fic finally home.