#FindTracy - A Refugee Story of Welcome

You helped us #FindTracy! In 1999, Refugee Storytellers Collective founding member Ayda Zugay met a woman named Tracy on her plane ride to resettle in America who welcomed her and her sister with a kind and unexpected gift. Ayda spent the next 23 years looking for Tracy to thank her for her act of welcome. To help her achieve this goal, the Lab spread a video message Ayda recorded asking viewers to help her #FindTracy. Thanks to our network of partners who helped to uplift Ayda’s story, CNN shared the story, reaching millions. Within a week of posting her message, Ayda and Tracy were finally reconnected! On December 12th, Ayda, her sister Vanja, and Tracy were reunited in person as part of the CNN Heroes Tribute. Following their reunion, Ayda shared in a post on LinkedIn that she is “so grateful to a worldwide community of people who have helped me #FindTracy after a decades long search!” Their story was also featured in a CBS piece by Steve Hartman in which Ayda says “The reason why I do what I do is because of Tracy. Every decision that I made had to do with paying it forward.”