Eisabel Morejón had left Cuba via Spain years before the Mariel exodus, saying goodbye to seven brothers and sisters. Now she wanted to get them out, too. On April 28, 1980, six days after the flotilla began, she and her husband drove to Key West looking for passage to Cuba. They found hundreds of exiles already jammed into marinas on a similar mission.

The couple made a quick decision. They paid a shrimp boat captain $1,300 to take only Morejón to Mariel. Her husband would stay behind with their two daughters. Also on the boat were 33 other exiles wanting to claim relatives on the island.

"When we got to Mariel 12 hours later, we found total chaos. You couldn't see the water, only hundreds and hundreds of boats on the harbor,'' said Morejón who is now 76. "I remember they told us we were boat Number 1,900.'' Morejón was told only two of her relatives would be allowed to leave. "I called my sister...She said, 'Take my kids -- Carlito and Nancy'.'' Both their names were put on the departure list. For 18 days, Morejón and the other exiles waited for relatives to be brought to the port. Finally, the frustrated boat captain said he could wait no longer. "We cried and begged him to stay, but he wouldn't do it,'' Morejón said.

Cuban authorities made an offer: take a boatload of strangers back to Key West and relatives would be sent on later boats. Morejón's nephew, Carlos, then 14, and her niece Nancy , 22, followed a week later. They are Morejón's Mariel success story. Her sister made it out three years later through Costa Rica.

Morejón still doesn't know how she found the courage to set out on such an odyssey. "There was a fever in Miami among Cubans to go get relatives out. I was just caught up in it,'' she said. "But I'm very glad I did it.''

-- LUISA YANEZ