WINTER SPRINGS, Fla. – Seven years after she went missing from her home -- lost in the swamp -- Nadia Bloom is getting ready to graduate from high school.
News 6 was there in 2010 when an entire community fanned out for four days searching for the 11-year-old with Asperger's Syndrome.
A man named James King eventually found the girl, saying God had told him where to find her.
Now 18 years old, Bloom is preparing to graduate from Oviedo High School at the end of the month.
"Finally! I'm putting my plan into motion because I'm doing what I always wanted to do," she said.
What Bloom wants to do is become an artist, and she's already winning national awards.
Recently, Bloom won the National Award of Excellence -- a National PTA Reflections Award -- for a work she calls "Dollmaking."
"Artists can see things that are not there," Bloom told News 6. "They can turn their ideas into something we can touch, and that's why I think the artists should get the credit they deserve."
Bloom's artwork could be seen even during her four-day-long ordeal in the woods.
She took pictures of her journey.
"The pictures were framed in a certain way at different angles," said her mother, Tanya Bloom. "She does have a creative piece to her."
Nadia Bloom wants to take the characters she has created and develop an animated series.
First, though, she'll graduate from high school.
"(I'm) happy and a little sad that she's getting older, but so thankful that we have this to celebrate," Tanya Bloom said. “It's something we may not (have) had.”
Tanya Bloom said she still keeps in touch with the people who helped locate and rescue her daughter.
Now, Nadia Bloom is preparing to attend the University of Central Florida in the fall, and she plans to study digital art and animation, her mother said.
