UPDATE: UT Student Lynn Selby Who’d Been Missing in Haiti Is Found Safe

By randyramirez in Blog on January 14, 2010 at 10:00 am | 8 Comments

Lynn Selby, a doctoral candidate in UT’s anthropology department, who has been doing research for her dissertation in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, has been found safe. Word spread to her family, friends, and colleagues Thursday evening. No further details were available at that time.

After the earthquake devastated the city on Tuesday afternoon, no one had heard from her and family and friends had put a search out for information through CNN’s iReport and Twitter.

“She has medical training, so we are hopeful that she is out helping people and is finding it impossible to reach us,” her sister, Leigh Selby, said Thursday morning. Telecommunications have been very limited in Haiti.

Lynn is 35 and fluent in Haitian Creole. She has been working with Solidarité Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women) and living in the Martissant neighborhood.

Lynn found a special place in her heart for Haiti as a young girl when the family moved there for her father’s job as an economist. “The thing that was moving then was the power and spirit of the Haitian people, Leigh told USA Today. “I am sure that spirit is moving her now.”

More than 45,000 Americans are estimated to be in Haiti, including many university students, missionaries, and other aid workers.