On the morning of Dec. 26, Nesbitt turned on CNN to find images of the tsunami ravaging Phuket, Thailand, where her 27-year-old son, Zachary Gibson, was traveling with girlfriend Bren Garrahan.

"That was it; I lost it," she said.

Nesbitt and husband David Butcher quickly mobilized to do what they could. Butcher posted information on the CNN bulletin board, and emailed all the hospitals in Phuket. Nesbitt spent her day on the phone with the U.S. State Department, the Thai Foreign Ministry and U.S. Embassy in Bangkok.

Nesbitt's son, who lives and works in Humboldt County for the U.S. Forestry Service and who attended Los Gatos High School, took a 31-day vacation in Asia. Gibson spent several weeks in Japan, where his girlfriend had been teaching English since July. The two traveled to Thailand on Dec. 22.

Throughout the day, Nesbitt and Butcher envisioned scenarios that would have kept them away from the beach. Perhaps the couple stayed in a cheaper hotel, farther from the beach. Maybe they slept in that morning.

No matter how much Nesbitt tried to reassure herself, the people she spoke with both stateside and abroad stressed the severity of the situation.

A woman at the State Department asked where Gibson and Garrahan were located. When Nesbitt replied, "Phuket," the woman on the other end gasped with fear.

A man from the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok informed Nesbitt that neither Gibson or Garrahan had been reported dead or injured. But then he said, "A lot of people on the beach were swept away and most of them were tourists."

"I know where you're going with this," Nesbitt said. "He has a shamrock tattoo on his ankle."

Having to explain to an official how to identify her dead son was the hardest part of the ordeal, said a teary-eyed Nesbitt. "That exchange made it real to me."

But on Dec. 27, a short email gave Nesbitt and Butcher reason to rejoice. The couple alerted their families that they were at a Catholic church in Phuket. The email simply said, "We're OK."

"We were lucky we could do that," Gibson said. "My mom's kind of a worrier."

In a longer email that followed, Garrahan told their story. Gibson and Garrahan had been snorkeling off the Thai island of Phi Phi Lei the morning the tsunami hit. The Thai boat crew began screaming for everyone to return the boat, gave everyone a life jacket and headed straight for the ocean.

The tsunami was encroaching on Phuket, so the boat rode against the coming swell to safety. After hours in the water, the boat returned to Phuket and the crew led the tourists safely to a Catholic church that still had electricity and Internet.

Gibson told his mother that returning to Phuket was surreal. He had left a crowded, lively marina and returned to a ghost town.

"Once we got to shore there were a lot of flipped boats and boats that ran aground on the beach," Gibson said. "We left from a part of Phuket that didn't get hit that hard--there was no major damage. It wasn't even until a couple of hours after that that we came into contact with people who were on the other side of the island, where buildings were collapsed, people were smashed by cars, people were missing friends."

The following day, the road to their hotel was closed but the Thai citizens cared for the couple. "The Thai people, their homes were destroyed but they kept helping others," Gibson had explained to his mother.

And their good luck continued, with their hotel untouched by the tidal wave, Gibson told his mother, and all their belongings and passports remained safely in their rooms. On Dec. 29, the couple left for Bangkok and arrived in Japan on Jan. 1.

On Jan. 2, Nesbitt received a call from her son. "I bawled, of course," she laughed Gibson arrived in his mother's Willow Glen home on Jan. 4.

He says he is lucky he didn't experience any personal loss or even see as much devastation as he could have if he had been on land when the tsunami struck.

"I encountered quite a number of people who weren't so lucky and they witnessed a lot of tragedy," he said. "I'm glad I didn't have to experience that. I feel I have a karmic debt to repay, and I'm not quite sure how yet."

Nesbitt describes her son as thoughtful person, who loves playing music. But like other 20-somethings, he has been searching for a calling.

"He's always been waiting for something that really spoke to him and maybe this will be it," Nesbitt said.

The experience has already made her determined to spend more time with her family. And she's just grateful her son is alive.

"The hardest thing to do is to make sense of it all, whether it was luck or statistics or God or the universe," she said.

To aid tsunami relief efforts, contact Oxfam International at 800.77.OXFAM or on the web at www.oxfamamerica.org; American Red Cross at 800.HELP.NOW or www.redcross.org; and UNICEF at 800.4UNICEF and www.unicefusa.org.

Staff writer Grant Shellen contributed to the story.