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PHOENIX (AP) — A 101-year-old Arizona woman who became a social media sensation earlier this month when she was photographed cradling her newborn great-granddaughter has died, a family member said Thursday.
Sarah Hamm said her grandmother, Rosa Camfield, died in her sleep in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler sometime between Monday night and Tuesday morning.
Hamm took a picture of her newborn daughter with Camfield on March 17 and posted it to her Facebook page. The photo shows Camfield, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in November, holding the then 2-week-old Kaylee.
"They can see how happy my grandma was to finally meet her because we weren't sure she would be able to meet her at all," Hamm said.
According to Hamm, someone put the photo on the social networking website Reddit, where it was spotted by Patrick Quinn, who handles social media for entertainment website Life of Dad.
"The part that stuck out to me was the stark difference of one life coming to an end and the other one just beginning," Quinn said. "The baby's life wouldn't have been had it not been for this woman and her daughter and her daughter's daughter."
Quinn decided to share the photo on the company's Facebook page.
That post has since garnered more than 2.5 million "likes" and has been shared nearly 79,000 times. Commenters also have been posting pictures of elderly relatives holding much younger family members.
"I never thought the photo would get off my Facebook page and gone on a roll like that," Hamm said.
She thinks it drew such an intense reaction because more families are seeing older generations live longer and, thus, be present to meet grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.
Camfield would have been very happy but very shocked that one photo could create such a stir, Hamm said. It's even more ironic given her grandmother did not learn to use a computer until she was 80. But Camfield did have a Facebook account.
"We set one up for her, but she never used it," Hamm said. "If she was probably a little more alert in that photo, she probably would've said 'Thanks for taking a bad picture of me. Thanks for posting it.' "
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