In a Life Filled With Tragic Turns, Colombian Girl May Face Yet Another : Adoption: She and her brother survived a flood and a plane crash before settling in the U.S. But once again, she is the orphan no one wants.

Bianca and Peter clung to each other through the tragedies of their young lives: the Colombian flood that swept away their mother and baby brother; the Bogota orphanage where they were the least adoptable residents; the Long Island plane crash that killed 73 other passengers.

Bianca and Peter were pulled from the wreckage of Avianca Flight 52 on Jan. 30, 1990, along with Bill Heidt, a 51-year-old American who had gone to Colombia to adopt them.

When it was clear that her husband and the children had survived, Aleta Heidt predicted that the crash would bond the family: “We will be closer now, for everything we’ve gone through together.”

But before the year was over the Heidts had turned Bianca over to an adoption agency, saying the Colombian orphanage never told them the girl was seriously retarded.

Since then the wispy 15-year-old has lived with three different foster families, spent several weeks in a psychiatric ward and almost been sent back to Colombia. She and her brother have not seen each other in nine months, and reportedly have no desire to do so.

“After all she’s been through she craves attention and love,” says Nancy Ballesteros, a woman who befriended Bianca, “and she’s been bounced all around.”

Bianca and Peter Heidt began life as Blanca and Pedro Beltran Urrea, children in a poor family in the mountains north of Bogota.

In 1985, they were crossing a river when a flash flood swept away their mother and baby brother. When rescuers arrived, they found the girl holding onto her brother.

They wound up in the orphanage where the Heidts found them in 1989. The Heidts had married in their 40s and wanted an older child. But the orphanage said if they wanted either child they had to take both, because Pedro, 10, and Blanca, 13, were unusually close.

Bill Heidt flew to Bogota in January, 1990, and spent a week with the children. They were small, the result of early malnutrition, and their eye problems forced them to wear glasses with thick lenses. But they overwhelmed their new “poppie” with hugs and kisses.

“It won’t be a honeymoon,” he told Aleta over the phone. “But they’re fine, they’re beautiful. They just need a home.” The Heidts renamed them Peter and Bianca.

After the plane crash, Bill, Bianca and Peter all wound up in separate hospitals. Bill had a broken neck, two broken legs and broken ribs. He couldn’t speak, but when Aleta arrived at his bedside he scrawled a question: “2 kids?” She told him both had survived, and he cried.

Peter’s first question was “Where’s my sister?” When he was reunited with her, the nurses had to push their hospital beds together so Bianca could hold Peter’s hand through the night to calm him.

Peter’s arm was broken, but Bianca’s injuries were more severe: two broken hips, a broken leg and 2-inch cut above her upper lip. She underwent seven hours of surgery, and left the hospital in a body cast.

Finally the family settled together in the Heidts’ comfortable house in their New York City suburb of Wykoff, N.J. Peter was soon in school, but Bianca remained home in a wheelchair. When he came home, Bianca’s eyes lit up. “I just want to stand and walk again,” she said. “Then I can go to school with Peter.”

Everything, at last, seemed to be working out. People magazine published a glowing profile, and a producer talked to Bill about a television movie.

But in May, 1990, the Heidts’ saga suddenly veered away from a Hollywood ending.

The Record of Hackensack, N.J., reported that the Heidts wanted to give up Bianca and were threatening to sue the adoption agency for misrepresenting her. They said tests showed her IQ to be between 40 and 60--significantly handicapped.

“They told us we were getting two healthy children,” Bill told the newspaper. “We’ll have to take care of her for the rest of her life, and we’re too old for that.”

Aleta seemed to have given up on the girl. “We’ve decided to send Bianca back,” she told friends. “I don’t want to bond with her.”

The adoption agency said that there was nothing seriously wrong with Bianca, that Bill Heidt had ample opportunity to evaluate her in Bogota, and that if the Heidts gave up Bianca they should give up Peter too.

“If we felt it would be too traumatic, we wouldn’t do it,” Bill insisted. “But we’ve talked to Peter himself, and to his psychiatrist. He feels Peter has adapted well, has developed bonds with us, and enjoys his life here.”

The Heidts’ attorney, Silva Barsumyan, says now that the couple were bewildered by Bianca’s extremely temperamental behavior but said nothing publicly to protect her. The girl’s psychological problems, the lawyer says, “will require a tremendous amount of care and years of therapy.”

Bianca left the Heidts’ home in the fall of 1990. After a few weeks with a family in Nutley, N.J., she was placed with a foster family in Baltimore.

But in April, 1991, the foster parents said they were giving up Bianca because she was “too much to handle.” Although they would not be specific, her departure apparently was related to her reaction to the birth of a baby in the family a few months earlier.

Shortly after that, Bianca was admitted to the psychiatric ward of a county hospital in New Jersey, where she stayed for more than a month. “When she gets close to someone, she begins to become distressed,” said a state child welfare official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “She has problems dealing with intimate relationships.”

Last month an adoption agency that accepted Bianca from the Heidts was about to send her to live in a group home back in Colombia. But Bianca had become a rallying point for Colombians in the area, and a county political official intervened and blocked the girl’s departure.

Under an agreement between the state and the adoption agency, Bianca has since been placed with another foster family in northern New Jersey. But Marie Shukaitis, director of the adoption agency, told the Record that Bianca was ready to leave and that stopping her was “very destructive.”

Barsumyan, the Heidts’ attorney, is more explicit: “Bianca has insisted for a year that she wants to go back to Colombia.” Peter, meanwhile, says he is better off without his sister, according to friends.

The Heidts did not respond to requests for an interview, and thus could not answer criticism, frequently voiced by Colombian-Americans, that they broke their promise to keep brother and sister together.

But Bill offered this defense to a reporter last year: “All we wanted to do is adopt a child and raise a family. We’re not bad. We’re good people. There’s got to be some good from this.”