We needed this. We needed her. We needed a reminder, amid all of the emerging grim details of Flight 3407, that all was not lost. We needed to be reminded—among the revelations of the larger circumstances that paved the way to tragedy—that there was a sliver of light in the darkness of Feb. 12.

Karen Wielinski and her daughter, Jill, were that sliver of light. The Continental Connection flight, operated by Colgan Air, crashed into the Wielinskis’ house at 3408 Long St. in Clarence Center. All 49 people aboard were killed. So was Doug, Karen’s husband, who was sitting in a back room. In what seems like a miracle to anyone who has seen pictures of the fireball from the impact, Karen and Jill somehow got out, physically unharmed.

Wielinski was at Wednesday morning’s simulcast, in a Cheektowaga hotel, of the second day of the National Transportation Safety Board’s hearings in Washington. She walked out of the conference room just before noon and into a waiting squad of reporters. Her friendly face was framed by blond ringlets, seemingly emitting a glow.

“My daughter and I definitely are survivors,” Wielinski said, her voice firm and even. “I think a lot of times people kind of forget that. There was some hope in all of this. Somehow we did survive. I don’t know how, but we did.”

It was nice to see her, for a lot of reasons. The release Tuesday of the cockpit conversations from the doomed flight, along with the testimony about training gaps, pilot inexperience and the pilots’ fatally flawed reaction to crisis—all of it layered a fog of sorrow and disbelief over the room. Wielinski brought a brief reprieve— and served as a living reminder of official accountability.

“I don’t think all the blame should be put on [the pilots],” she said. “You have to look at the bigger picture, [including] training. More than one thing has to be considered; it’s a combination of everything.”

More than a dozen relatives of the victims are here, many of them with a photo of the lost loved one pinned to a shirt or jacket. They come to learn the awful circumstances behind the tragedy. A few of them speak with the media, to give tribute to the dead and to plead with the Federal Aviation Administration for better training and safety standards.

Karen Wielinski appeared like a spirit amid the grief. Like the two cops who were rescued from the World Trade Center rubble, this disaster also had its small miracle.

In the last three months, she has found another home, returned to work in the Clarence schools and—with the support of three adult daughters—managed to live with loss.

“We’ve endured a lot together,” Wielinski said. “The main focus was on getting a new home, and we’ve accomplished that pretty well. It’s been a rough ride. Everything we had was in that house.”

For families of the victims, she is a living link to the tragedy. She feels connected to those families but, despite her loss, does not precisely feel like one of them. Her husband, she believes, was spared the awful fate of knowing he was about to die. Relatives of the plane’s passengers, as evidenced by Tuesday’s animated 3-D re-creation of the plane’s 26-second plunge, know a grimmer truth.

“Unfortunately, those people on the plane had time to think about things,” she said. “I didn’t want to bear their sorrow [Tuesday]. It was difficult to come today, but I did want to meet them and support them.”

This tragedy has pulled back the curtain on the frayed subculture of commuter airlines. Colgan Air and similar carriers are the minor leagues of aviation, populated by pilots who—like Flight 3407’s 24-year-old first officer, Rebecca Shaw—work for $16,000 or so a year in hopes of someday latching on with a major airline.

The pilots take on a lot of responsibility for little pay, are trained to the FAA’s gap-laden standards, often lack experience and sometimes—as on Feb. 12—react badly in a crisis. But outsourcing short hops to commuter airlines saves money for the major carriers. Now, once again, we ask: At what price?

Karen Wielinski appeared Wednesday. However welcome the sight of her was, it did not make the pain—or the questions —go away.