Malaysia passenger girlfriend Wood mckenzie Newday _00000709.jpg
Partner: I have to prepare for worst
01:32 - Source: CNN AP

Story highlights

NEW: Sarah Bajc says she still feels Philip Wood's presence

NEW: She writes on Facebook: You never know who might see a post and offer help

She says she thinks her partner is a hostage and is more valuable alive

Wood would remain calm, help ease tensions, she says

Beijing CNN  — 

Sarah Bajc has a bag packed, ready to join her partner of two years, a passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, wherever he is.

She has included an outfit for him.

“Because he wouldn’t want to wear his dirty old stuff anymore,” she said of Phil Wood, a 51-year-old IBM executive. “And he probably wouldn’t want to wear a hospital gown, if that’s the case. So it’s all ready.”

She is the first to admit that some of her friends say she is in denial about his fate, but Bajc is on a desperate search to find the man she calls her soul mate. She believes he is still alive and being held hostage somewhere.

“This is a planned activity. Somebody wants to do something and make a message out of it,” she said.

Bajc, 48, said her logic tells her that there are hostages and it would serve no good for the captors to kill the passengers. The hijackers would look callous and brutal, and they wouldn’t have as much bargaining power, she believes.

“I have to believe the hostages are valuable to them,” she said.

If there was a hijacking or other emergency, Wood would have been one of the passengers who steadied the ship.

“He’s very level-headed,” she said. “And I think he is the kind of person who would help to calm a really chaotic situation.”

She said she’s not ready to take the path at the fork in the road that leads to bad news, but she has prepared.

“Because no matter what, I still have to go forward, and no matter what, his family still has to go forward,” she said, standing among moving boxes.

She and Wood were about to move from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur and were going to get married this year.

They met in 2011 at a bar in Beijing called Nashville. They soon moved in together, along with her teenage son.

Wood and Bajc have new jobs in Kuala Lumpur (she will work at a school there), and the movers showed up the day the plane disappeared. She had to send them away.

The news said the plane was missing. Her stomach crashed. Then she just didn’t believe it. The 10 days since have been surreal, she said.

Wood was one of three Americans on the plane, which went missing on March 8.

Bajc started a Facebook page and a Twitter account called “Finding Philip Wood” to gather and share information about the flight.

Some people are sending comforting thoughts – “I so believe in my heart they are at out there!! Praying for all and safe return home!!!!” writes Debbie Walton Vaughan.

Others are sharing theories and news reports.

In one post, Bajc writes: “Facebook and Twitter are resources. Perhaps there are other useful platforms as well. If we keep sharing this, you never know who will see it and be able to answer some questions.”

She told CNN that people ask her what Wood is like, and she said if you were in his presence, you’d see him as a good, generous and thoughtful man who loves his family and friends.

He made her feel a way that “I didn’t believe was possible to feel,” she said.

And she feels him still.

“I genuinely feel his presence,” she said. “I don’t believe he has left us yet.”

READ: The 10 big questions that linger over the search

READ: Did terrorists take control of Flight 370?

READ: Why are we so gripped by missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370?

READ: Malaysian government uncomfortable in spotlight over missing plane

READ: Snapshots of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers

READ: Flight 370 joins some of history’s biggest mysteries

CNN’s Aliza Kassim contributed to this report.