Legless Quake Victim Helped to Stand Tall

Hector Castro isn’t much different from other 12-year-old boys. He loves basketball, swimming and fishing. And he wants to be tall.

“I want to be very tall,” Hector told the doctor who made his new legs.

Hector left his home in El Salvador to get artificial legs in the United States. He was severely burned down his back and legs in an earthquake that devastated his country a year ago. Doctors there had to amputate both legs.

His story has captivated countrymen who see him as a symbol of their spirit to recover from the earthquake and a second temblor that killed 1,200 people and caused $1.6 billion in damage. Many in El Salvador hope that if Hector can walk again, they too can rise above their losses.

“He has been touching many, many hearts,” says Nubia Arevalo, director of Children’s Wishing Star, a nonprofit group that helped bring Hector to the United States to get artificial legs and learn how to walk with them.

He arrived last April, and originally was to have stayed just through the summer. But now he may be staying permanently.

After he went home in December, his parents decided that trying to walk on the hilly, rocky paths around their village would be too difficult for their son. He has returned to stay with Don and Karen Manley, owners of a nursing home who met Hector while they were in El Salvador helping with the earthquake relief.

“It’s the best for him. We want our son to get ahead, because with our poverty we can’t help him,” Hector’s mother, Anabel Hernandez, said at her home. “I think in his future he’ll be in the United States. That’s the best thing for him.”

It wasn’t an easy decision. The Manleys say they didn’t want to take Hector away from his family. And Hector’s family says they didn’t want to ask too much of the Manleys. After days of agonizing, they let him go.

“It was the most loving thing I’ve seen in my life,” Manley says. “I can’t imagine what they went through.”

Seeing Hector struggling to walk off the airplane with his new legs when he arrived in El Salvador had to be bittersweet, Manley says.

“I’m sure it was one of their happiest moments of his life, but I’m sure it was one of the saddest. They had to know right away it wouldn’t work because he was struggling.”

Hector’s mother said she always believed he would walk again. “I don’t have words to explain the happiness that was inside me when I saw my son taking steps. I always told my son, ‘Have faith, my son. You’ll walk again.’ ”

Hector has been getting around on his new legs since August. His first attempt ended in early June when he fell and broke a bone in his leg, setting his progress back three months.

“He’s had to learn how to fall and how to get up off the floor,” Manley says. “It’s a long process. On flat surfaces he does wonderful.”

Hector has forearm crutches to help him with balance. “It’s going to be years before he feels real comfortable,” Manley says.

The Manleys will send Hector to school in Findlay in the fall.

For now, he’s spending the winter with his surrogate parents at a condominium they own in Naples, Fla., because immigration rules won’t allow him to attend school yet. His days are filled with tutoring in English and other subjects, swimming and fishing.

The Manleys, who have two married daughters and three grandchildren, say Hector is considered part of their family.

He also has captured many other hearts with his spirit and determination.

The children he met in Findlay welcomed him with open arms. Cleveland Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel, a native of Venezuela, spent an hour talking with Hector last summer.

“He’s going to do whatever he wants,” Manley says. “There’s no self-pity in him.”

Associated Press correspondent Marcos Aleman in San Salvador contributed to this story.