Where 3-Year-Old Girl in Iconic Katrina Photo is Now 10 Years After Rescue

— -- The three-year-old girl in this iconic photograph from Hurricane Katrina, showing her bear-hugging the airman who rescued her, still has the same big smile 10 years later.

LeShay Brown, now 13, has finally been reconnected with Air Force Master Sgt. Mike Michael Maroney, who had been searching for her for a decade since he never got her name.

But last week, a miracle happened.

"A friend of hers contacted my son on his Instagram and said, 'Hey, the girl your dad's looking for is a friend of mine," Maroney told ABC News on Thursday. "He sent us a photo of the girl a month after Katrina, showing her and her family in a shelter in Tennessee. I compared that photo with my photo, and I knew that it was her."

The airman, who currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, said that when he phoned Brown and her family, he was nervous and scared that it would be a hoax, but her voice and the memories her mother shared confirmed for him that this was indeed the girl.

"Words cannot describe how I felt hearing their voices again at that moment," Maroney said. "I was like, 'Is this real? Is this really her?' I've been waiting for 10 years for this, and finally I found her. I had a stupid smile across my whole face the whole time."

He found out Brown was now 13 and living in Waveland, Mississippi.

She doesn't remember what happened, but has been told the story many times.

"We had got on a helicopter and my mother was scared because the doors were opened, and she was just crying," Brown told ABC News affiliate WLOX. "And they say I told her everything was going to be OK, and I gave the man a hug before we got off."

Brown and Maroney both said they're looking forward to a face-to-face reunion in a few weeks.

"I feel like he was a special person to me that I never got to meet before,"Brown said, adding that Maroney "saved my life and helped us through some hard times and things, and I would really like to meet him and, of course, thank him."