Profile of Courage : Despite Acid Attack Injuries, Teen-Ager Has Buoyant Spirit

Sunlight streaked into the kitchen where Cheryl Bess sat at a table, her closed eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. A cheery visiting nurse chatted with the 16-year-old about boys and rock music and movies, kneading lotion into the girl’s leathery hands, which look like those of an aging woman.

Cheryl does not squint at the light for she is blind, the victim of a man who poured acid on her head eight months ago and left her to die in the desert.

But she feels the warm rays on the foundation of her face-in-progress, and points her bandaged head toward the window while talking about the “new� nose she will eventually get. When her lips are surgically completed, she’ll finally be able to crack a “real� grin.

‘Sees’ in Vivid Color

“Hopefully, they will give me ears, too,� Cheryl said. She chortled softly. “I’m starting to become human again.�

Though her eyelids are sewn shut, Cheryl still views her life in vivid color. And in the world she has filled with music, singing and the riddles she tells visitors, Cheryl finds joy in small pleasures: a 15-cent ice-cream cone at the drugstore, fresh watermelon for lunch, making her own bed in the morning, pecking out Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on her electric organ.

An avid reader whose only luxury, according to her welfare-dependent mother, had been walking to the neighborhood thrift store for used, 15-cent paperbacks, Cheryl is now beginning to learn the Braille alphabet. Meanwhile, she listens to her favorite books on tape, hundreds of which have been sent by well-wishers around the world. Her doctors and nurses at the University of California, Irvine, Burn Center in Orange say she is walking well. She still loves to dance to her favorite pop music groups--Duran Duran, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper. And although a plastic tube still penetrates her trachea, Cheryl’s conversation is typically punctuated with warm throaty giggles.

“She never says ‘what if?’ She never mopes,� said her mother, Norma Bess, who has recently moved from San Bernardino to Orange. “It would be very easy for her to lose interest in everything and just shut herself in from the world, not to read or play music or tell jokes. But she hasn’t. She does all the singing around here. She’s the one who tells the jokes. Her attitude is: ‘I have to learn Braille? OK, so I learn Braille.’ Her attitude is that life must go on. To learn that at 15 is something. . . . She’s not feeling sorry for herself, and I can’t do it either.

‘Anything Is Possible’

“I think being out there (in the desert) for eight hours really helped her get through this,� Bess added. “Once you face death, anything is possible.�

That Cheryl survived the disfiguring attack that began at dawn Oct. 24 seems a miracle in itself.

As she walked the three miles to San Bernardino High School that morning, a man abducted Cheryl and drove her to a remote region of the Cajon Pass, about 12 miles south of Victorville. He tried to rape her, failed, then kicked and beat her. It was only after Cheryl pretended to be dead that he stopped. Then he poured sulfuric acid over her upper body and drove away.

For the next eight hours, she wandered through the desert, frantically trying to rub away the acid that was eating through to the bone. When someone finally came upon her, an investigator said at the time, “she was like a walking skeleton.� Her face was virtually gone.

Still, the high school honor student said recently, she was determined to walk to safety--�my mother would have worried about me�--and described in hushed tones from a hospital bed her assailant and the white van in which she was abducted. “I wanted to live,� she said simply.

“He told me that if I didn’t do what he told me to, he’d pour this stuff on me that would make my hair fall out,� Cheryl said. “It didn’t burn; it felt like water. I didn’t feel it until I was walking and I put my hand up here,� she said, running her palm over an elastic head bandage where her ear used to be. “My hair was coming out in my hands. . . . I miss my hair now. I liked running my hands through it.�

Suspect Has Record

Jack Oscar King, a 65-year-old maintenance worker at the San Bernardino housing project where the Besses lived, was arrested the same night. He has been charged with kidnap, attempted murder, assault with a corrosive liquid, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted rape, assault with intent to commit rape and mayhem, forcible oral copulation.

King, who served a 16-year state prison term for the 1961 kidnaping and rape of a 9-year-old Irvine girl, is being held in lieu of $500,000 bail at the San Bernardino County Jail. King’s trial has been set for July 29. His attorneys are seeking a change of venue because of publicity surrounding the case.

“I’m sure Cheryl hasn’t totally forgiven him, but she just expresses it in a different way. She understands somehow that wrong has been done to her. . . . She tried a few times to tell me about what happened out there. I think she was more willing to talk about it than I, as a mother, could listen to it. When she started . . . I had to make her stop,� Bess said, her voice momentarily breaking.

“I think that’s how she heals herself. By dealing with it, by not denying it. And her attitude has pulled her through this,� Bess added.

‘Now Look at Me’

“I think of all the things I could have done to get out of the van, like jump out on the freeway,� Cheryl said evenly. “My mom says I shouldn’t think that way because, anyway, I could have broken my leg and I didn’t know what he was going to do to me. But I could have gotten over a broken leg. Now look at me.�

From the beginning, said her plastic surgeon, Dr. Bruce Achauer, the question was not whether Cheryl would survive as much as how to rebuild her face. She suffered third-degree burns on her head, face, shoulder, neck, hands and forearms and what doctors refer to as fourth-degree burns--in which the body is burned to the bone--on her face and scalp. In October, following Cheryl’s second plastic surgery, Achauer called her case “the worst I’ve seen in an awful long time.�

Today, Achauer, director of the UC Irvine Burn Center, is more optimistic. “She looks something like a bullet . . . smooth,� Achauer said. “We’ve done several surgeries and her skull was finally covered a few weeks ago, so she’s beyond all that mess of changing dressings and the headaches (that accompany open scalp wounds).

“We’ve done some of the basic groundwork on her face, neck and lips, so things are at least kind of in the right position now. We’ve done skin graft after skin graft just to create eye lids� by repeatedly layering delicate tissue, he said.

Rebuilding the eyelids is the first step in an effort to help her regain some vision, Achauer said. The next step will be to replace the corneas of her eyes, which have been destroyed.

No Hair Follicles Left

She “really has no nose yet, but we’re making plans to do that (soon),� Achauer added. It is likely, however, that Cheryl will always be bald; because she was burned to the bone and there are no hair follicles left.

Shortly after the desert attack, news accounts were carried worldwide of Cheryl’s spirit and positive outlook about the disfigurement. Even when a plastic tube in her throat prevented her from talking, Cheryl scrawled “I love you, Mom� on a note pad each morning. When she got her voice back, the teen-ager, who still dreams of becoming an obstetrician, tape recorded from her hospital bed a cheery holiday greeting to her classmates at San Bernardino High School.

Thousands of people have sent books and musical tapes, cards and letters, cheering her on and vowing to pray for her recovery.

“I have about 90 tapes right now,� Cheryl said with a chuckle. “I gave some of them away because people heard that my favorite group is Duran Duran and I got so many of the same kind. I gave them away to people who needed them more than I did.�

After Christmas, the attention waned. However, last month, when a Philadelphia radio station interviewed Norma Bess on her daughter’s 16th birthday, public interest was rejuvenated. Cheryl and her mother said they still receive mail, all of which they keep and paste into albums.

‘People Are Noticing’

“It’s weird,� Cheryl said with reflection, “because all of a sudden all these people are noticing me. It’s nice. I love the letters and cards. I’ve got some from Australia, Ireland, England, China.

“It’s hard to see myself as being courageous,� she added, wagging her head. “I mean, I know I’m a strong person but. . . .�

An estimated $240,000 has been donated to the Cheryl Bess Trust Fund, established last October by the Safety Employees Benefit Assn., a union that represents members of San Bernardino County law enforcement agencies. Money from the trust fund, which now stands at about $175,000, has provided the mother and daughter with medical supplies, occupational therapy equipment and the electric chaise-style bed in Cheryl’s bedroom.

They also have received help from the Orange County Burn Assn., a nonprofit group. “We pay their rent,� said Pat Darnell, executive director of the burn association. “The San Bernardino money is strictly for medical needs.�

Because Norma Bess has no access to either fund, she is still on welfare, and caring for her daughter is a 24-hour-a-day job, she said. The Orange County Social Services Agency stopped their welfare payments this month as a result of confusion over whether the Besses had access to the trust accounts. Norma Bess said the confusion was straightened out and welfare payments are to be reinstated soon.

Continues Therapy

Three days a week, Cheryl undergoes physical therapy with a nurse who comes to her apartment. Twice a week, she and her mother visit the burn center. She has continued her studies with a home tutor and is spending Friday nights learning the Braille alphabet. She also has a “mobility� instructor who is helping her walk with a cane and “find my way around.�

Much of Cheryl’s day is spent at the organ, tapping out the music of Duran Duran (she received a personal, tape-recorded message from the group’s lead singer, Simon Le Bon, and still dreams of meeting the group.) Other time is spent listening to the radio. “Music is my life,� Cheryl explained. Sometimes she and her mother just talk and joke throughout the day. It is difficult for Norma Bess to carry on a telephone conversation without at least one interruption from Cheryl, who says “I love you, Mom� from whatever room she happens to be in.

One recent weekday, Cheryl ventured out of their newly rented apartment with a visitor for the short walk to a pizzeria. It was the first time she had been away from her mother outside the apartment, as well as the first time, other than trips to the hospital, that she had been out of their car. She quickly put at ease the young man working the counter, and the two of them bantered for half an hour.

‘I Can Almost See Them’

“It’s scary being blind,� she said on the walk back. “Especially when I don’t know where I am. I like it when you describe the colors of buildings to me. Then I feel like I can almost see them.�

Cheryl has her moments of sadness, too.

“I wish God would grant me just one wish,� Cheryl said, pausing only a moment to think. “To go back in time to that morning before I left for school. I know I can’t do that though.�

Tax-deductible donations can be made to The Cheryl Bess Trust Fund, c/o SEBA, 697 N. Mountain View Ave., San Bernardino, CA 92401, or to the Orange County Burn Assn. -- with a note on the check specifying Cheryl Bess account--c/o the UC Irvine Medical Center, 101 The City Drive, Route 81, Orange, CA 92668.