Whichever way you cut it, Sydney grandmother, Karen Nettleton, is a remarkable Australian.
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For the last five years she has been living a waking nightmare.
Her daughter, Tara, travelled to Syria in 2014 with husband, Haled Sharrouf, to support Islamic State.
They took their five young children into the war zone; an act of irresponsible recklessness that defies all comprehension.
Two of those children, Abdullah, 12, and Zarqawi, 11, are dead. They were killed in the same air strike that claimed Haled's life in September 2017. Abdullah had made international headlines only a short time after arriving in Syria when Haled posted a picture of him holding the severed head of an enemy of IS on social media.
Zaynab, now 17, was married off to another IS fighter with the sanction of her parents shortly after her arrival.
The mother of two, who gave birth to her first child when she was just 14, has been to hell and back. Heavily pregnant with her third child, she has borne the heavy responsibility of looking after her siblings and her own children in a hellish environment while still just a child herself. Zaynab is also suffering from shrapnel wounds.
The hero of this tale is the gutsy and determined grandmother and great grandmother who just wasn't going to give up.
Her own mother, Tara, died of "medical complications" in 2015.
The only hope these kids have had was their grandmother who, to her great credit, did not let them down.
Five years of sleeplessness nights and ceaseless lobbying of an initially disinterested Australian government paid off on Sunday night when the children were spirited across the border and into Iraq.
Three other Australian children, aged six to 12, accompanied them. They are reported to be the children of Yasin Rizvic and his wife, Fauzia Khamal Bacha. They have also apparently lost their parents.
With anti-IS sentiment in Australia, particularly in government circles, running high, there is little doubt this outcome would not have occurred if Mrs Nettleton had taken her foot off the pedal for even an instant.
She has made three trips to Syria, a place where Australian diplomats fear to tread, in her successful bid to locate, and now to repatriate, what is left of her family.
The biggest breakthrough came in April when she was reunited with the children in the infamous Kurdish-controlled al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria.
With no love lost between the Kurds and the survivors of the families of IS fighters, conditions there are appalling. Medical facilities are rudimentary at best, food is in scarce supply and the children were highly vulnerable.
Those risks would have been greatly magnified if, at any point, it had become known that the Australian government was taking a direct interest in their case. Foreign Minister Marise Payne and the DFAT staff who orchestrated what was effectively a rescue mission deserve full credit.
That said, the real hero is the gutsy and determined grandmother and great grandmother who just wasn't going to give up.
Mrs Nettleton's perseverance resulted in Scott Morrison's decision to "co-operate" with an extraction so long as no Australian lives were placed at risk.
We cannot ignore the fact that these children were innocent victims. Yes, their rehabilitation will need to be handled carefully. But let's not lose sight of the fact their grandma is one inspirational woman who has stuck with them through thick and thin.
If anybody can put these kids on the right track it is her.