Touching photo shows the moment a 98-year-old woman was reunited with her son after a year of quarantine
- Yoshia Uomoto, of Seattle, was reuinted with her family for the first time in a year on Tuesday.
- Uomoto, 98, lives in a senior facility that has been under lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- The facility started allowing visitors on Tuesday after all residents were fully vaccinated.
A 98-year-old woman in Seattle reunited with her son for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic on Tuesday, and a touching photo shows her reaction.
Yoshia Uomoto, lives in Nikkei Manor - an assisted living facility that serves a predominately Japanese-American community in Seattle - and COVID-19 restrictions were finally lifted at the facility this week after all residents were fully vaccinated, Reuters reported.
Uomoto's son, Mark Uomoto, and her niece, Gail Yamada, surprised her with her first in-person visit on Tuesday.
Photos of the visit show Uomoto shocked and excited to see her son in-person for the first time in a year- until Tuesday they had been visiting each other through a lobby window.
"We wanted to carefully orchestrate it right," he told the TODAY show. "It was so wonderful to hear, see her expression of excitement that she had because we've not seen Mom, my cousin and I, for over a year... So it was wonderful to see her and it was more heartwarming for me to see her reaction and so happy to see us."
He told TODAY that it was "wonderful" to see his mother so excited.
"That will be with me forever, that moment right there," he said.