Maddie was reading long before most. Her mother, an elementary reading and language arts specialist, may have had a hand in that. But, from the start, Maddie was possessed of the kind of ‘sticky’ brain that brought early order to her window on the world. Instead of the typical stop most 5 and 6-year-olds make in Kindergarten, Maddie went straight into 1st grade and she thrived. By the time she was in 3rd grade, she was reading at a 9th grade level and was developing a real love for learning. She credits much of this to Miss Pestka and, later, to ‘Mr. O’ — Mr. Omiotek — a bit of a Renaissance man who breathes student-engaging life into social studies, science, and art at Tamaroa Grade School, a small school community with an average K-8 enrollment of around 88 or so over the past half-decade. But there is no lack of commitment here on the part of the professional educators or the administrative and support teams. Maddie has been a beneficiary of that. But that’s not even the half of it.

Maddie was born without an anterior cruciate ligament — the ACL — in her right leg, a rare congenital condition, statistically impacting approximately 17 out of every 1,000 live births. Not only that, but her right femur had not developed at the same rate as her left which, by third grade, had led to a disparity of three inches between the left and right legs. She knew that, at some point, surgery would be required to set things right, but she was not looking forward to it. Still, the clumsy 3-inch extension attached to the bottom of her right shoe was no treat, either. She was, after all, a cross country runner and she finally decided that this just wouldn’t do— something had to be done.

The leg-lengthening surgeries were planned and scheduled. Much of her 4th and 5th grade years would be spent commuting between Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital in Saint Louis and home, which had been equipped for her accommodation. These accommodations included a rockstar grandmother homeschooler who had, herself, been a classroom teacher for 26 years. With her support team in-place, Maddie didn’t miss a beat, education-wise, but it was a hard stretch for her, physically. In addition to being a normal nine or ten-year-old girl, the apparatus attached by 6 pins to the two halves of her surgically-broken femur would require her daily attention. Put more precisely, she’d have to use an Allen-wrench to make several turns to expand the space between these two halves of her femur by approximately one millimeter each day. This process went on for months. But one day, on the drive to Saint Louis to check-in with her medical team, Maddie asked her mother for her iPhone. She wanted to take pictures out the window. Over time, this led to a real interest in photography, and Maddie began looking at things