
DATE: Monday, September 22, 1997            TAG: 9709220077
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   88 lines

HOME A SPECIAL PLACE FOR SPECIAL CHILDREN ST. MARY'S HELPS MOTHER OF DISABLED GIRL THROUGH THE TOUGH TIMES.

Jasmine will never take wing the way most little girls do - skipping down a school hallway or sprinting through a meadow, the wind in her hair.

But to her mother, the bed-bound child sprouts wings like an angel.

``She's a gift from God,'' says Kelli Wolff, watching her severely disabled 3-year-old daughter being strapped onto a board that, tipped forward, will put her in a position to taste some applesauce mixed with graham crackers.

For more than two years, Kelli Wolff struggled to care for Jasmine at home before placing her in St. Mary's Infant Home, a downtown Norfolk facility that serves the most profoundly mentally and physically disabled children in Virginia.

By the time she took that difficult step in March, the young mother was getting by on only snatches of sleep between trips to doctors and emergency rooms. She'd gone through 20 baby-sitters in a year and put everything else in her life on a back burner.

Like the other 86 youngsters who live at St. Mary's, Jasmine can neither walk nor talk. Like half of them, she gets sustenance through a tube.

But this day, Gloria Arroyo, a teaching assistant from Norfolk public schools, carefully spoons the pureed mixture into Jasmine's mouth. The small, bespectacled child makes a few feeble movements with her mouth and tongue in an effort to swallow, and the remembered pleasure of food brings a big smile to her face.

It wasn't easy for Wolff to trust the care of her precious child to St. Mary's staff. But now, six months later, she's glad she did.

``I fought it at first, didn't think I could stand it,'' said the 25-year-old Navy petty officer, rocking her daughter at St. Mary's one recent morning. ``At first, I was here every spare second. . . . But they take care of them like they're their own.'' She visits Jasmine daily.

When Wolff was pregnant with Jasmine, during the first trimester, she was exposed to a virus that caused her daughter's birth defects. Jasmine was blind and deaf at birth and soon had a long list of other disabilities.

Other caregivers are occupied with similarly disabled youngsters in the cheerily decorated room. It's a one-on-one situation. Brightly colored bears dance on the walls. This room could pass for any kindergarten room, if the people there weren't immobile.

Bill Jolly, chief executive officer for St. Mary's Infant Home, calls the children who live there ``the most vulnerable members of society.'' Most, he says, are disabled by birth defects, but about 10 percent are incapacitated by abuse. Others are handicapped by accidents.

Jolly points out that having a child who is severely disabled by birth defects, accidents and illnesses is ``an equal opportunity club. It can happen to anybody.''

The medical involvement of children cared for at St. Mary's has increased in past decades. Jolly attributes that to advances in medical care and because more youngsters are saved.

Some of the children don't live to adulthood. Of those who survive, appropriate placement is found, when they reach 18, at Lake Taylor Hospital or Southeastern Virginia Training Center.

St. Mary's proximity to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and DePaul Medical Center enables it to care for children who require services usually provided only in acute-care settings.

St. Mary's operates on about $6 million a year and employs 150 people. Most of the money needed to care for patients comes from Medicaid. But extras are made possible by donations, including those through United Way of South Hampton Roads.

St. Mary's is a designated United Way agency. That means funds only go to the nonprofit agency if donors earmark them.

Last year, St. Mary's received more than $122,000 through United Way giving.

The United Way campaign now under way has reached $2,531,580 of its $15.5 million goal.

Kelli Wolff, who plans a career in physical therapy when she leaves the Navy next spring, has a smile to match her daughter's as she watches the little girl smacking down the applesauce.

``This child has a will to live beyond anybody's,'' she says. ``I should have named her Angel, because that's what she is.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Navy petty officer Kelli Wolff visits her daughter Jasmine, 3, who

receives care from St. Mary's Infant Home in downtown Norfolk. St.

Mary's operates on about $6 million a year and employs 150 people.

Most of the money needed to care for patients comes from Medicaid.

But extras are made possible by donations, including those through

the United Way of South Hampton Roads. Jasmine, who has been blind

and deaf since birth, receives her nourishment from a tube.

Jasmine's disabilities are not the measure of her light, Wolff says.

``I should have named her Angel, because that's what she is.''