ATLANTA -- It isn't often that we get a window into someone
else's life, that we get to see how tragic events led a Georgia woman
and a Chinese orphan to a hospital room at Children's Healthcare of
Atlanta.
One late night, two years ago, Tara Newton was surfing the Internet.
"I just said I wonder if there's kids with burns?" she said. "I had
never seen anyone with burns. I hit search and her little face popped up
in the middle of the night on my my phone, and it's like something said
'There you go, now you know why. That's why.'"
For five years, Tara had thought what happened to her was random. A
group near her family on a Destin beach on the Fourth of July was
setting off fireworks when one landed on her.
Her burns were severe. And where she was burned, down the side of
her head and face and neck, was strikingly similar to Luci's. She
recuperated at Augusta's renowned burn center.
Remarkably Tara healed, and there is little evidence of her accident.
Tara learned that Luci had been left at a police station with fresh
burns when she was 3 months old. A newspaper notice featured her
picture and news of her abandonment. Married with a toddler son, Tara
felt she had to go get her.
"I printed out her file and her beautiful pictures, and I told my
husband 'Just look at them,'" Tara explained. "He told me 'I think this
is crazy. But I know it's what we need to do.'"
One year later, Tara and Luci met at an orphanage in Wuhan, China. Lucy was wearing a tutu her mother-to-be had sent her.
Today, one year after her adoption, Luci is 5 years old. She is
precocious, fluent in English, and very familiar with Children's
Healthcare, where the process of restoring her tiny body will take a
long time.
Tara loves every perfectly imperfect inch of her little girl, and
where others see scars, Tara sees proof that the worst thing that ever
happened to her, led to the best.