Mike Maroney will be reunited with the three-year-old girl seen in a picture widely circulated in 2005 shortly after he picked her up, along with her mother, in a helicopter. Maroney never got the name of the pigtailed girl, whose electrifying smile and warm embrace burned into his memory for years.
That hug "recharged me and gave me a little bit of a silver lining and some hope…that kept me going through rough times," he told PEOPLE magazine, which first reported the reunion. "It couldn't have come at a more important moment."
Now a reservist, Maroney was an Air Force pararescuer during Katrina, and the girl was among those he helped from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. A military photographer captured the now-iconic photo after Maroney dropped her family off at the city's airport.
The girl has been identified as LaShay Brown, by both People and Air Force Times, which spoke to the girl via text.
Brown, now 13, doesn't remember Maroney, but said she looked forward to meeting him.
"I was a child then," she told the paper. "But now I realize that he gave me the best thing that ever happened to me by taking me out of that situation. So I would say thank you."
They plan to reunite the weekend of Sept. 19-20.
The Air Force Times first reported Maroney's effort to search for the girl in the picture in an article published in March.
That story helped launched a social media campaign and a #FindKatrinaKid hashtag shared thousands of times.
well just recently he was put into contact with her and is soon going to visit her in New Orleans.
