The story of Annika

Annika Prindle twirls and sings in the home video, filmed two weeks before a tornado smashed her family's Hugo house to bits last summer. She's dancing to the song "Farmer in the Dell" with her little brother, Nate, and her dad, Jerry, in the kitchen.

Now, her little body stiff as a board, Annika reclines on a pink beanbag chair in her new home while baby formula flows through a tube into her stomach. Her mother, Christy, pours the dull-white mixture from a pitcher again and again until Annika, her tummy full, smiles with appreciation.

"My dream for her is to be like any other child," Christy, 43, says of her daughter, who celebrated her 6th birthday in June.

The tornado left Annika, the red-haired girl known as "Ani," with a brain injury that doctors think could be permanent. She can't sing and dance anymore. Her parents shuttle her from wheelchair to bed to bath. She can't talk or walk or feed herself. Christy and Jerry pray every night for Annika's recovery. They're a family reduced to three now -- the tornado killed 2-year-old Nate -- but even as they mourn, they are fighting hard for a new beginning.

Since the tragedy, the Prindles have moved forward with uncommon strength. Facing doctors skeptical that her brain ever would recover, they have reached into their pockets for months of costly and intensive medical treatment usually aimed at drowning victims. They've pushed their daughter, not knowing how hard to do so, with music therapy at home and, soon, with treatment to address her anxiety about eating by mouth. They also rely on deep religious faith as they reconstruct their lives in a new house in Shoreview with a tornado shelter. They hope for a future that could include siblings for Annika. And, just maybe, a normal life for their daughter.

"It's hard for us to accept at this stage that this is the way she's going to be forever," says Christy, her eyes brimming with determination.

A tornado's ugly path

It was Sunday evening before Memorial Day 2008. Christy and Jerry had considered taking their children to the Wisconsin Dells for the holiday weekend but decided to stay home. They had plans to sell their house and move closer to their jobs. So they organized their basement and spruced up their yard. As Christy dressed for a wedding, Washington County sirens blared.

Jerry watched for weather warnings on television. He noticed trees whipping one way, then reversing direction. Nate played beside him. Jerry, 45, had survived one of the deadliest tornadoes in Minnesota history in Fridley in 1965 when he was a toddler. He knew what a tornado could do because of stories he heard over the years.

Sensing danger, Christy opened a door to look outside to a spitting whirlwind of debris roaring down the street. She turned to run toward the kitchen. Seconds later, the tornado flattened the Prindles' house.

Walls fell. The tornado had ripped off Annika's clothes. She fought to breathe, pinned beneath her mother. Christy, covered with debris, couldn't move. She remembers touching her daughter's bloody head. Nearby, Jerry lay under shattered lumber, his leg crushed.

Then the hail came. Residents ran from their creaking houses to the destroyed Prindle home. One of them resuscitated Annika. During a wild ambulance ride, Christy and Jerry would learn later, medics revived Annika two more times.

Nate was found behind the house in a pond where he had drowned. He was buried the day before Annika's 5th birthday.

Life for Jerry and Christy Prindle and their surviving child had changed forever.

Fighting to overcome her injury

After feeding Annika through the tube that perforates her stomach, Christy spoons apple yogurt into her mouth. Annika squeezes her atrophied hands against her ribs in protest. She fears choking because her brain can't remember how to swallow. Her cries sound more like wails. Her brown eyes plead: No more, Mommy.

Feeding Annika by mouth -- her parents shower her with praise when she relents and swallows -- is a necessary ritual, much like stretching, reading and telling stories. Someday, Christy and Jerry remind their daughter, she again will eat her favorite meal of chicken nuggets, French fries and ketchup.

Annika's parents try to bring her back from a place nobody really understands. Somewhere inside this girl who can't walk and talk is the Annika whom Christy and Jerry so desperately want back.

The prognosis isn't encouraging. Oxygen depletion clouded Annika's brain, leaving her with a condition similar to a near-drowning. Doctors were skeptical that she would regain any of her functions that most people take for granted. One doctor said that her allergies and asthma, combined with the shock of the tornado, worsened her brain injury.

Jerry, a software engineer, and Christy, a speech therapist, understand the reality of their daughter's limitations. They don't know how hard they should push. But they refuse to do nothing, knowing that Annika might have 40 years of life left after they're gone.

For four months this spring they took her to intensive hyperbaric therapy, often given to divers kept underwater too long. "It felt like something we needed to try," Jerry says. "If your child is hurt like this, you're going to do anything you're capable of trying."

Annika spent 80 sessions inside a chamber -- about 90 minutes at a time -- infused with pure oxygen. Her parents hoped that the treatments would activate new cells in her brain to "work around" her injury. Her vision improved, they say, and she's more alert.

Annika's doctor doesn't oppose the family doing this, Jerry says, but considers results of such treatments anecdotal in the absence of hard medical data. Jerry and Christy will decide whether Annika should continue her treatments in the fall. Traveling 20 miles each way, five days a week, took a toll. They paid $10,000 for treatment.

Annika soon will attend a feeding clinic to ease her anxiety about eating by mouth.

Much of the therapy in the Prindle home involves music. Jerry plays trombone and guitar, Christy the flute. Both parents sing to Annika to engage her. Education continues, too. Annika went to summer school in Mounds View. This fall she'll attend Turtle Lake Elementary School in Shoreview. She'll be with children her own age even if much of her learning involves physical therapy.

A family of deep faith

Faith runs deep in the Prindle family. Christy and Jerry draw strength from prayer and from fellow parishioners at Eagle Brook Church in Lino Lakes. It was a church member who brought Annika back to life in the pandemonium in Hugo.

Christy and Jerry decided soon after the tornado that they wouldn't blame each other for what happened. They don't condemn God or think they did something wrong to deserve such a cruel fate. The tornado was random, Christy says, and anger won't help.

"If you keep asking 'why?' you'll never on this Earth find an answer that satisfies you," Jerry says of the tornado. "If you hang onto why, you'll never go forward." But then: "There are times I think, 'Who hurt my baby?' and I get angry." He lowers his head, his voice breaking. Christy turns to him. They share many hugs as they grieve over losing their son and, to a great degree, their daughter.

"When something like this happens to a family, either they turn bitter or angry or turn it to good, for love, to use it as testimony for others," said Steve Anderson, a neighbor who raced to help the Prindles after the tornado. "Jerry and Christy are such an inspiration to me as a parent, how to cherish your children and love each moment. They might not realize how strong they are and what example they're setting for other people."

The Prindle family has become a symbol of "resilience to us all'' in Hugo, says Mayor Fran Miron. "Without exception, you see that with all of the family members. They're fortunate to have that faith and family support and the community support as well."

The 1965 Fridley tornado, which killed 16 people, dropped a house across the street on top of Jerry Prindle's childhood home, flattening it. A refrigerator kept debris from crushing the family in their basement. "For a while I felt that tornadoes were out to get me," Jerry says. He never blamed God.

A larger Prindle family

The 12-minute dancing and singing video salvaged from the wreckage in Hugo brings smiles, then pain. "I have a hard time watching it because that's the way our family used to be," says Christy, who turns away after a few minutes. Another video shows Nate playing with a new toy train on Christmas morning. Another shows both children splashing in the tub. Jerry offers this advice: Capture even ordinary moments on video because you never know. You just never know.

Annika remembers her brother, smiling big when his name is mentioned. How much Annika's brain absorbs is unknown, but Jerry and Christy think she knows Nate is gone.

At what point, Jerry asks, will she feel frustration and defeat at his encouraging words to walk and talk again? "It's just a fight between what she wants to do and what her body will allow," Jerry says.

Pink and purple hand-drawn greetings from Annika's day care friends paper the walls. The kids -- friends she knew before the tornado -- know what happened but struggle to understand why. They ask why she can't walk or play. She doesn't look the same.

Christy and Jerry have planned a "Reconnect with Annika" party in hopes of helping other children understand their little girl. Jerry ticks off their names to Annika, who smiles. They plan a talent show, with Annika as the judge.

Annika, like other girls her age, loves Dora the Explorer, Dora's awesome cousin Diego, Nemo, Cinderella, Tinker Bell and knock-knock jokes.

Annika listens to happy music while her parents put her to bed. She's a princess, dressed in pink. Christy reads her the Belly Button Book, a Sandra Boynton story about bare-chested hippos. Annika giggles, watching the pages that her mother turns before her. The door to the tornado shelter opens from her bedroom. It has a steel interlocking door and enough baby formula for a week.

Christy and Jerry take turns listening for Annika at night, a monitor alerting them to her crying. They pad down to her room to calm her fears, to shift her bare legs away from the cold metal railings of her adapted bed.

Their future, full of uncertainty, includes adopting children of any age or nationality.

"We have so much love for Ani, so much love for our son," Christy says. It's not about replacing Nate. Nobody can replace Nate, who loved trains and is buried near the train tracks that pass a cemetery corner southeast of Hugo. They want a sibling for Annika, maybe more, "however many come our way," Jerry says.

The Prindles refuse to give up hope that Annika will get her voice back or dance again. The power of prayer, Christy believes, can help Annika on the long road ahead. She and Jerry want Annika to be independent someday. "We're continuing to hold out an awful lot of hope," Christy says.

Joe Skelly, a longtime family friend, says he finds Annika's progress and her parents' steely fortitude amazing.

"It's been an unbelievable journey," he says. "Right after the tragedy pretty much anybody but them thought that Ani wouldn't make any significant progress. Some kids just [exude] a glow that makes you happy to be alive. That little girl is trying to come out."

Donations for Annika's care can be sent to:

The Prindle family

Eagle Brook Church

7775 20th Ave N

Lino Lakes, MN 55038

Kevin Giles • 612-673-4432