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(CNN) Amid devastation, hope.

Haiti's colossal earthquake of 2010 leveled entire neighborhoods, and the capital Port au Prince was a reeling. Rescue arrived too late for many and medical resources were scarce for the survivors. An estimated 200,000 were dead.

And yet, nearly eight days after the earth shook, a young boy emerged, gasping from the rubble. Lungs filled with dust and exhausted, five-year-old Monley Elysee was alive against all odds. Both his parents had perished in the quake, his mother lay dead meters away, but Elysee had survived, huddled under a metal table -- a treacherous crawl space bent and buckled by the weight of concrete above it.

It was up to his uncle Gary to bring Elysee to the hospital in downtown Port au Prince for urgent attention. At the entrance the duo encountered CNN's Anderson Cooper and crew, reporting on the aftermath of the earthquake.

"Suddenly this little boy was brought in, covered in cement dust and rubble dust, totally shocked," Cooper recalls. "He wasn't speaking, but he had made it."

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