Swept away by waves and then lost for weeks in a makeshift morgue, Utah teenager Kali Breisch will be brought home to Utah Saturday.
Kali's body — finally identified from dental records and a DNA match last week — was cremated in an open-air Buddhist ceremony Tuesday in Khao Lak, Thailand, nine weeks after she was caught in the tsunami that killed at least 170,000 people.
Her remains will be brought home by her father, Stuart Breisch, and his wife, Sally Nelson.
Kali's family, which celebrated the Skyline High sophomore's life at a memorial service at Kingsbury Hall in mid-January, plans to have a quiet ceremony to scatter her ashes, according to Kali's aunt, Joni Glynn. A likely site will be Fisher Tower in Moab, where Kali's mother's ashes were scattered after her death 12 years ago, Glynn said.
The Breisch family, which had been vacationing at the Khao Lak Emerald Beach Resort before the tsunami hit, searched for Kali for a week after she was swept away from their resort bungalow. Although Kali's sister, Shonti, spotted a photo of Kali on a bulletin board of recovered tsunami victims at a makeshift morgue on Jan. 3, the family had to return to Utah empty-handed.
It took six more weeks for forensic experts to identify her body, lying among 5,000 other bodies decomposed from sun exposure.
"Kali's was the 321st body to be released, after 320 Swedes," said Glynn, who talked last weekend with her brother-in-law by phone from Thailand. Because Kali was tanned and had dark hair, her body had not originally been set aside with other foreign tourists, she said.
Stuart Breisch and Sally Nelson returned to Thailand last week to explore how to spend the $40,000 that has been contributed to the 4Kali.org foundation, set up to aid the people of Khao Lak.
In a mission statement on the foundation's Web site, the family explains that the money will "provide loving child care, education, job training and what we can do to help the local Thai people in Khao Lak regain their independence and rebuild their broken lives."
The foundation may contribute to a nature preserve and help build a school, Glynn said. "We truly believe we're not alone on this planet, and we can't make it alone," Glynn said, explaining the family's philosophy.
Breisch and Nelson also distributed Valentine cards made by students at Oakwood Elementary School in the Granite School District to children in a Khao Lak refugee camp. Most of the children lost at least one parent to the tsunami.
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com