Nadia Bloom's Parents Speak: 'She's Doing Great'
Girl, missing for four days in a swamp, just got lost on a bike ride, mom says.
April 14, 2010— -- The parents of 11-year-old Nadia Bloom, who was rescued after wandering for four days in and near a Florida swamp, said their daughter is doing "great."
"She's doing great, she really is," said Tanya Bloom, Nadia's mother, at a press conference today. "It's a story you don't usually get. It's a story of hope."
Tanya thanked her daughter's rescuer, James King, but said the words were not enough.
"'Thank you' is not appropriate for what James King did," she said. "We are so fortunate God used him to bring her back to us."
"You know that part at the end of the third 'Star Wars' when all the ewoks are going crazy? That's how it was," Nadia's father, Jeff Bloom, said of the moment they were told Nadia was found alive.
Other than a lot of bug bites, several scratches and some bacteria that's been identified in Nadia's blood, her doctor, Mary Farrell, said Nadia could go home by the end of the week.
"It's really remarkable," Farrell said. "She's had no fever. She's doing well, eating and drinking."
According to Tanya Bloom, Nadia set out on a quick bike ride Friday night from her Winter Springs, Fla., home and simply got lost. Contrary to previous reporting, she said it had nothing to do with a nature book the family had and little to do with Nadia's "very mild" Asperger's syndrome.
"She's not going to wander off necessarily," Tanya Bloom said. "This wasn't because of that [the Asperger's]. This was because she was curious."
Nadia asked her mother to take a quick bike ride and took her backpack "for her treasures," Tanya Bloom said.
When she didn't come back, she added, the search expanded from a couple neighbors to police with bloodhounds, and then finally to an entire community of support.
"One of the darkest times you feel is right before nightfall when the night is coming," Jeff Bloom said. "You don't know where she is or how she is. ... You don't know if she's scared or crying. Your heart just breaks."
But while they were worrying at home, Tanya Bloom said Nadia claimed to be praying in the swamps, saying, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."
