Friday, April 20, 2007
Kristina Heeger: Vienna sophomore remains in stable condition
Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times
At right, two officers carry Tech student Kristina Heeger out of Norris Hall after Monday’s shooting. Heeger remains hospitalized.
Kristina Heeger
- Class: Sophomore
- Major: International Studies
- Hometown: Vienna, VA
- High school: Fairfax High
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Millions around the world saw the photo of Kristina Heeger being carried from Norris Hall by two law officers.
Heeger's friend, Virginia Tech sophomore Katie Cox, found the picture as she searched the Internet for news of the shooting Monday morning. She'd learned from an instant message that her friend had been wounded.
Thursday, Heeger walked for the first time since the shooting, said her mother, Inessa Anderson of Vienna, Va. "She's OK. She's on her way to recovery."
Her husband, Eric Anderson, said the family was too stressed and tired to talk about Heeger's ordeal in detail. "We've just literally been here 24 hours a day and we want to save our energy for helping her."
Kara Whipkey, one of Heeger's friends, said she's kept Heeger in her prayers. "Kristina was one of my first friends here as an incoming freshman at Virginia Tech," Whipkey wrote in an e-mail.
"Whenever she would see me she'd give me the biggest hugs, and ask how I was. Whenever I am with Kristina I have the best time; she makes me laugh."
Heeger was born in Ukraine, but grew up in Northern Virginia and graduated from Fairfax County High School in 2005.
Cox and Heeger had been friends since their freshman year together, and plan to share an apartment next year, Cox told The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y.
Heeger showed up in Norris Hall on Monday morning to attend Jocelyne Couture-Nowak's intermediate French class in Room 211. Cho Seung-Hui's rampage killed Couture-Nowak and five of her students. Heeger was one of two in the room who were wounded, according to The Washington Post.
Heeger was shot in the back. Doctors had to remove two-thirds of one of her kidneys. She was listed in stable condition Thursday, her mother said.
When Cox visited Heeger in the intensive care unit Monday afternoon, her friend was sedated and dazed. Cox asked Heeger how she was doing. She replied, "Pain."
Her friends kept vigil with her at the hospital around the clock.
"Everyone's standing here, just shocked, with raccoon eyes," friend Jordan D'Ambrosio told a Washington Post reporter.
"We feel very lucky that she's going to pull through," Eric Anderson said. For the others who did lose their lives, "we're still just in shock and lament."
"All in all, she is such a beautiful person inside and out," Whipkey wrote, "and like everyone else at Tech, she doesn't deserve one ounce of pain."
-- Mike Allen
