HEMET (CBSLA) – An 11-year-old girl was overcome with emotion as she heard clearly for the first time thanks to her new implant. 

Catalina Arroyo’s mother expected her to be excited, but she got more of a reaction than she was expecting. 

Catalina was excited Thursday to play at a park here in Hemet, swing with her sisters and experience brand new sensations now that she can finally hear. 

She was born with inner-bone hearing loss, and the little she could hear was muffled. 

“They said it was the vibrations that she would hear from us,” her adoptive mother, Christina, said. 

She added it was if Catalina was trapped inside a booth, trying to listen to voices through a wall. 

This week, when her doctor put the attachment onto her implant for the first time, hearing close to crystal clear was overwhelming. 

[Reporter: You could hear once they put it in?] 

“Yeah!”  Catalina said. 

[Reporter: Were you excited?] 

“Yeah!”  she replied. 

Catalina has spina bifida and other special needs.  Doctors once told her mother she would never walk. 

“She’s a miracle,” Christina Arroyo said. 

Now that she can hear, it should be easier for her to speak – and that’s giving her family hope for the future. 

“She’d be more than what everyone expects from her,” Christina Arroyo said. 

The best part about the implant so far, Catalina said, is hearing all of her friends’ voices.