ATTLEBORO, Mass. —

It was a reunion seven months in the making when Air Force Master Sgt. Hector Rivera finally returned home to his dog, Kanoh.

"He’s my son. He’s going to be seven years old in March, and I've had him since he was a pup, and I didn’t have anyone that could take care of him," Rivera said. "It was tough leaving him behind."

He loves his 6-year-old dog so much, he had him tattooed on his arm.

To make sure his dog was taken care of while he was in Kuwait, Rivera turned to a program called Dogs on Deployment.

"This is the second time I've used them. Words cannot describe how thankful I am," he said. "They have been wonderful to me. Constantly, they would stay in contact with me. That made me feel great."

Through the program, volunteer families foster dogs whose owners are overseas.

Before he left, Rivera entrusted Kanoh to Joanne and David Donahue.

"Honestly, I just want to say, I'm so grateful, grateful for people like Joanne and David," he said.

"He’s been just a wonderful dog," Joanne Donahue said. "I'm just so glad to see them back together again. It’s great."

Kanoh learned some new tricks while Rivera was away too, like closing doors and learning Spanish commands.

"This is the story the community needs. This is nothing but goodness right now," David Donahue said.

Finally, Rivera was able to come face-to-face with Kanoh for the first time in months.

"I didn’t know how he was going to react, to be honest with you," he said. "I got really teary. He knows. You can’t explain it."

For David Donahue, fostering Kanoh was also a lesson in what service can look like.

"The level of service is not just for veterans," he said. "I think we all as a community support their service, and that becomes our service."

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BATAVIA, IL — It’s been a lonely year. Travel warnings, social-distancing guidelines, and the risk of infection have kept families apart. But as millions get vaccinated, mini-reunions are happening around the country.

At the outset of the coronavirus outbreak, Jim and Kathy Freedlund, both 69, decided they wouldn’t take any chances with their health.

“We were, pretty much, for lack of a better term, sequestered in the house for the better part of a year,” said Jim Freedlund, a retired mailman.

The Freedlunds have two children and three grandchildren.

“The most difficult thing was not being with our kids and grandkids,” said Kathy Freedlund, a yoga instructor.

The safety measures meant the Illinois couple had to cancel or postpone all their trips to see their youngest granddaughter, Joy.

“The first year she was born, her first year, we flew out to Utah six times. They came up once,” said Kathy.

The last time they had visited with the toddler in Utah was Christmas of 2019. Since then, they’ve only been able to see her and their son, JJ, through a screen.

“It was really hard to know that Joy was growing and changing so much,” said JJ Freedlund from Utah. “And for them to just see little snippets here and there and not actually get to be around it and be excited.”

“It was 16 months,” said Jim Freedlund.

But once they were fully vaccinated and waited the two weeks for immunity to kick in, Kathy booked the first flight out to see their granddaughter, who is now a bubbly 2-year-old.

“It was just such a happy feeling to get that stick in the arm and know we're on our way to being able to see the kids again,” she said.

“We weren't even sure if she would actually remember them or know who they were because there's a difference, especially for a kid, between someone that's on a screen and someone that's right in front of you,” said JJ Freedlund.

But Joy had not forgotten them.

Kathy shot a cellphone video of the reunion. In the video, she can be seen talking to Joy through a car window.

“I can’t wait to spend some time with you,” said Kathy in the video.

“It was just I wanted to cry,” said Kathy Freedlund. “I could hardly talk. And then Megan, the daughter-in-law, came to get her out of the car seat, and it was the most darling thing she said: ‘Where’s grandpa?’”

“It's about as close as I've ever come to crying from being happy because I knew we were going to get to see part of our family again,” said Jim Freedlund.

The shared experience of isolation is beginning to be replaced by reunions like this.

They’re happening across the country, as family and friends try to catch up on missed time.

The Freedlunds are filled with gratitude. With so many lives lost, they know they’re fortunate.

“It was nothing short of just a wonderful feeling to be able to have that connection again.”

It was nearly a year to the day the last time these families saw one another safely. Here, they share what the first moments of being together again felt like.One of the last times Paul Klein and Fred Emigh saw Fred's mother, Mary, was at her 100th birthday party. They reunited recently, after her 101st birthday party, and captured the emotional moment on video. For Barbara and Jim Ortman, they were thrilled to be able to see their granddaughters for the first time in a year. Their daughter, Crystal Masley, is a family physician and knew how important mitigating COVID-19 risks for her parents was. So they made the difficult decision to stop in-person visits. Now, real-life reunions are possible, thanks to the COVID-19 vaccination and new CDC and local guidelines. Watch more on their stories above. We are living in unprecedented times with COVID-19 spreading across the nation and world, and the stories about how people are coping, battling, and persevering through the pandemic have become more important than ever. In each episode, “Field Notes” brings you a handful of stories about how coronavirus has impacted real people across the United States, and you can hear more about what it’s like to cover the pandemic from the local news teams that are committed to keeping you informed, no matter what.