Sarah Bajc has a bag packed, ready
to join her partner of two years, a passenger on Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370, wherever he is.
She has included an outfit for him.
"Because he wouldn't want
to wear his dirty old stuff anymore," she said of Phil Wood, a
51-year-old IBM executive. "And he probably wouldn't want to wear a
hospital gown, if that's the case. So it's all ready."
She is the first to admit
that she may just be in denial about his fate, but Bajc is on a
desperate search to find the man she calls her soul mate. She believes
he is still alive and being held hostage somewhere.
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"This is a planned activity. Somebody wants to do something and make a message out of it," she said.
Bajc, 48, said her logic
tells her that there are hostages and it would serve no good for the
captors to kill the passengers. The hijackers would look callous and
brutal, and they wouldn't have as much bargaining power, she believes.
"I have to believe the hostages are valuable to them," she said.
If there was a hijacking or other emergency, Wood would have been one of the passengers who steadied the ship.
"He's very level-headed," she said. "And I think he is the kind of person who would help to calm a really chaotic situation."
She said she's not ready to take the path at the fork in the road that leads to bad news, but she has prepared.
"Because no matter what,
I still have to go forward, and no matter what, his family still has to
go forward," she said, standing among moving boxes.
She and Wood were about to move from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur and were going to get married this year.
They met in 2011 at a bar in Beijing called Nashville. They soon moved in together, along with her teenage son.
Wood and Bajc have new
jobs in Kuala Lumpur (she will work at a school there), and the movers
showed up the day the plane disappeared. She had to send them away.
Families wait for word of missing flight
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The news said the plane
was missing. Her stomach crashed. Then she just didn't believe it. The
10 days since have been surreal, she said.
Wood was one of three Americans on the plane, which went missing on March 8.
Bajc started a Facebook page and a Twitter account called "Finding Philip Wood" to gather and share information about the flight.
Some people are sending
comforting thoughts -- "I so believe in my heart they are at out there!!
Praying for all and safe return home!!!!" writes Debbie Walton Vaughan.
Others are sharing theories and news reports.
In one post, Bajc
writes: "Facebook and Twitter are resources. Perhaps there are other
useful platforms as well. If we keep sharing this, you never know who
will see it and be able to answer some questions."
She told CNN that people
ask her what Wood is like, and she said if you were in his presence,
you'd see him as a good, generous and thoughtful man who loves his
family and friends.
He made her feel a way that "I didn't believe was possible to feel," she said.
And she feels him still.
"I genuinely feel his presence," she said. "I don't believe he has left us yet."
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