CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nearly 30 years ago, Rachal Horn was separated from her father, Joe Kimball, but she never lost hope that one day she would find him.
3NEWS spoke with Horn in May as she searched for Kimball, and with the help of the online community, Horn and Kimball were reunited in July and embraced for the first time in three decades.
"I went from being the girl that never got to say I got to call my dad,” she said. “I never got that and now as a woman I finally got that."
But just six months after their reunion, tragedy struck: Kimball died suddenly Monday.
"Now I feel like I'm right back to where I was when I was a girl and it's gone," she said.
Horn did not say what he died of, but along with dealing with such devastating news during the holidays, she now has the added stress of figuring out how to claim her father's remains.
“How am I going to do this?” she said. “It’s the holidays. I can't exactly can pull this out of my back pocket."
The Nueces County Medical Examiner's Office Director of Operations Joe Hayen said when a family is notified of a loved one’s passing, they typically have six days from the day they are notified to make final arrangements, but there are exceptions.
"But if we do in fact have a family member that is engaged and really just needs time to coordinate a funeral home or out-of-state situation, and where they need time to transport to another state or another county, we absolutely make those exceptions on the sixth day rule."
While Horn continues to grieve, she said she is thankful for the two weeks she got to spend with her father when they were reunited.
Two weeks, she said, she will always cherish.
"I think it blew him away a little bit how much I fought for him over the years,” she said. “Looking for him. And I know he was really happy."