Mugged at benefit, she focuses on kindnesses

Laurie Schwaab's Christmas was quiet and simple, spent with her mother, Elizabeth Poganski, her 21-year-old son, Nathan, home from college in Mankato, and Nathan's dad, Scott Schwaab.

There were few gifts under the tree, but nobody complained. "We had so much more to celebrate this year," Schwaab said.

Readers might remember Schwaab, a 45-year-old Andover woman who was mugged at her own fundraiser in November. After suffering a stroke in September, doctors discovered an unrelated, and inoperable, brain aneurysm. Friends organized a kegger and raffle at Jimmy's Bar in northeast Minneapolis on Nov. 27. The two-hour event was held to help defray medical bills and to remind Schwaab that she was not alone during this difficult passage.

The benefit raised more than $1,300, which Schwaab had in an envelope in her purse as she stepped outside the bar. Two men grabbed her purse and took off running. Schwaab is in regular contact with police, but there's been no breakthrough. "I'm doing OK," Schwaab said. "As well as can be expected."

All of this came as "a complete shock" to Schwaab, who works as the assistant to the dean of a private university. She was getting ready for work Sept. 23, when she felt a headache coming on. The pain became so fierce that her boss told her to go home. But Schwaab had committed to working at a pledge drive that afternoon at local Christian radio station KTIS. "They're counting on me," she told him.

She started her five-hour shift but, after two hours, "I just couldn't take it anymore."

She returned to work the next day, reasoning that "you can't run to the doctor every time you have a headache." By noon, she was hearing music. "I'm almost afraid to tell you this," she told her boss, "but I'm hearing voices."

A follow-up exam revealed the unrelated aneurysm. "One more day," surgeons told Schwaab, "and I, for sure, would not have made it."

She's grateful that she has no paralysis, but the stroke has affected her memory and speech. "When I'm talking, I know what I want to say, but the words don't come out," she said. That frustrates Schwaab, who studied accounting and has always been "such a perfectionist."

Dead-center in the brain

The aneurysm is far more serious, "because it's dead-center in my brain." Her hope lies in a procedure called "coiling," in which surgeons insert a catheter through her groin up to her brain and plug the aneurysm with tiny metal coils.

Just before Thanksgiving, Schwaab put up a tree to surprise Nathan, something she hadn't done in many years. She's grateful that she did it then. She was mugged two days later.

At his 21st birthday two weeks after she left the hospital, Schwaab tearfully apologized to Nathan, "for the inappropriate words that seemed to fly out of my mouth."

"Mom," he said, "I'm just going to chock it up to the brain injury," to which she joked, "I wonder how long I can get away with using that."

The benefit was coordinated by close friends Holly O'Leary and Tara Fernandez. Jimmy (JJ) Haracz, a fellow student at Spring Lake Park High School, quickly and graciously offered up his family-owned bar for the event.

"I hesitated, because I really like to do things on my own," Schwaab said. "I was coming to terms with people trying to help me."

The event was "perfect." She prepared a speech, in which she thanked the Lord "for giving me a second chance at life." She thanked friends and colleagues for coming and told them how humbled she felt. "It was an evening that took my breath away," Schwaab said. "Everything went without a hitch."

O'Leary immediately sent out an e-mail blast to update friends. A sum close to the original amount was recouped, said Schwaab, whose guilt returned. "The economy is so horrible," she said. "They came to the benefit and donated when they probably couldn't the first time. Now they're struggling to give a second time."

She hopes to return to work in early January, after seeing her doctor for a follow-up. This weekend, though, is all about rest, joy and gratitude.

"I came so close to not being here," she said. "Our Christmas was a Christmas of blessings, of being alive and having the most wonderful friends, people who haven't given up on me.

"As horrible as everything that happened is, I cannot begin to explain the overwhelming support and kindness and goodness of people. As bad as the evil that happened, the good has totally restored me."

A fund to help Laurie Schwaab has been set up through the Anoka Hennepin Credit Union. Checks in her name may be sent to any branch.