OMAHA, Neb. — There's nothing like family time, and it's just that much sweeter when you haven't seen your family in a month due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Just four days after moving to Wuhan for work, Charlie Wasserburger was caught in the middle of it all.
"And four days later they locked down the airports and all forms of transportation and I was then stuck there," he said.
Charlie self-quarantined himself in his new apartment for about two weeks, desperately trying to find a way to come back home.
"I didn't really care about comfort. I would've jumped on top of a bunch of luggage and just laid there all the way back to the U.S. I didn't care I wanted out of there," he said.
With the cooperation of the U.S. and Chinese governments, a couple weeks ago Charlie got on a flight to San Diego to be quarantined. He was tested every day for a fever, and never ended up having any symptoms. Charlie volunteered to be quarantined at Camp Ashland, but isn't complaining that he spent his two weeks in California.
"65 to 75 degrees every day. One day it rained, but I was wearing shorts and t-shirts the whole time getting a tan and met a lot of fun friends," Charlie said.
For Charlie, the quarantine process was starting to get lonely, especially on Valentine's Day. But with the help of our sister station KGTV in San Diego and Charlie's wife Fauniel, he celebrated with heart-shaped pizza.
"It was better than a box of chocolates," Fauniel said with a laugh.
Charlie got back to Omaha late Sunday night. The very first thing he did?
"Yeah I ate a Runza! That was the first thing I did," he said.
At the moment he doesn't know if he'll ever return to China. For now, he's just looking forward to spending time back home and catching up on lost time.
"And now I can just go back to normal life, and get back to work, and enjoy my family and my little furry friends again," he said.
