Guy Lunardi's blog

Eddie, Heather and all of the kids!!

Thank you so much for your performance!! It has been a very tough week for Tori and us and when we viewed these pictures we were very moved and uplifted at the same time. All of those kids in Pray4Tori shirts deeply touched our hearts!! We can hardly wait to see the video of your performance which we are sure is awesome!!

Here are the pictures for everyone to enjoy!!

The Dance Unlimited Team!!

The Dance Unlimited Team performing!!

The Dance Unlimited Team showing off their Pray4Tori shirts!!

Thank you all again!!

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan

Here is a story that came out in today's edition of the BYU Daily Universe.

http://newsnet.byu.edu/textonly/story.cfm/56514

Candle line to fund accident victim's recovery
By Marianne Holman
Daily Universe Staff Reporter

A local store is selling a new line of candles to help finance the rehabilitation of an Orem girl who was critically injured in a car accident last June.

For Every Body, a store based out of Lindon that sells bath and body products, has created the Pray4Tori line of candles in an effort to raise money to help Tori Schmanski, a 15-year-old still recovering from her crash injuries.

After seeing Pray4Tori written on cars and fliers, Becky Lunceford, CEO of For Every Body, wanted to get involved.

“It just kind of touched my heart,” Lunceford said. “ I wanted to do all I could to help.”

On June 19, Tori was riding with her younger sister and two cousins when their car rolled 2 1/2 times, landing upside down in a canal. Everyone but Tori was able to swim out of the vehicle. Both Tori’s cousin and sister remember being pushed out of the car, and believe it was Tori who pushed them.

After helping the other girls out, Tori was submerged for 10-15 minutes, trapped in the backseat of the car until members of an EMT team removed her. The EMT’s resuscitated her as she was rushed to the hospital, and then again during the life flight to Primary Children’s Medical Center. She has been fighting for her life ever since.

“She wasn’t supposed to make it through the first night,” said Tim Schmanski, Tori’s father. “She is so strong and a fighter, and made it through that.”

Because of an estimated 25 minutes without oxygen to her brain, doctors believed that Tori would be in a vegetative state, at best, following the accident. Yet in spite of predictions, Tori has shown miraculous activity.

“When she’s not fighting an infection, she is so in there,” said Marilyn Hess, the mother of a good friend of Tori’s.

Dear Tori,

After a few days in Paris, France, Sophie and I are now in Barcelona, Spain.

We of course think about you every hour of the day and wish that you will recover from this pneumonia promptly. There is no doubt that Tim and Maria are taking care of you like no other parent would. Their dedication in you is amazing.

Someone posted recently that you should be proud of the faith and conviction they have placed in you and indeed you should. There is no doubt about that.

Take care,
-Guy

The wonderful people at For Every Body have now created the beautiful Pray4Tori Candles and the heart warming display at the University Mall in Orem, Utah. Thank you so much Becky, Jeremy and everyone else at For Every Body who contributed on this project!! Here is a picture of the full display and actually seeing the it in person is truly moving and recommended for anyone who lives close enough to Orem.

The Pray4Tori Candles are now also available to order!! There are 6 candles available online now. They are only $14.00 each and all donations go into the Tori Schmanski Fund.

The For Every Body store in the University Mall currently has a wide variety of Pray4Tori candles to purchase as well. The Dance Club in Orem will also have some in stock early next week.

Thanks everyone for your continued love, prayers and support for Tori!!

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney and Brendan

It is with an unbearable apprehension that I am getting ready to leave Utah for proximately 4 weeks. This is pretty typical and would not be a big deal at all if it wasn't for Tori Schmanski.

Let me put something in perspective: every time Tori did something that required extended family attention I have been away.

Whether it was because we didn't know where she was one evening, lied to her parent (or grand-parents) and didn't actually go where she was supposed to, needed to be pickup from some place and many others, I would always be at least several hundred miles away (and usually on another continent).

But I always knew she had enough common sense to not put herself in too much trouble. Everyone always mentions how pretty she is but the most striking thing about her is probably how smart she is (expect when she is being silly of course).

This time, Sophie will not be with Tim and Maria. She is coming with me. This time, Tori is not really able to use her intelligence to pull herself out of a tricky situation.

She has the most loving family. Not only Tim and Maria are always by her side and provide care to her, her brother, sister and grand-parents are there with her as well. After 70 days, I understand what Tim means by figuring out Tori's needs faster than the medical staff who hasn't been around her enough yet. We hope that they will quickly adapt to her way and make Tim and Maria feel comfortable about the care they are providing to her.

In a week from now, Sophie and I will probably be sitting somewhere in Paris, France thinking about Tori. One more time, we are going to explore things, in search for the ultimate Paris experience so that, in due time, Tori and Whitney can join us on our “City of Lights adventure”. Making people discover Paris is one of my favorite thing in the world and I can't wait to do it with them!

Live Strong,
-Guy

How do we even begin to thank all of the wonderful, talented, caring and extremely dedicated medical personnel at the PCMC (Primary Childrens Medical Center)?? We are eternally thankful and grateful for the mere existence of the PCMC and the marvelous staff who cared for Tori and saved her life not once, but twice during our 65 day stay. They ALL help to create miracles in so many ways!!

Maria and I originally wanted to mention many names in this tribute but the list is far too long and we were confident someone would be missed. We literally worked with hundreds of outstanding people during our stay and each and every one of them had a direct impact on our lives. We owe them alot and we learned so much from every one of them.

So for all of you, a heartfelt THANK YOU ALL and may God bless you!!

We definitely plan on returning to the PCMC some day on our own terms, to introduce Tori to all of you once again in far better circumstances. The prayers and support of so many, many people will ensure this takes place and we are eagerly building for and awaiting that day.

Sincerely,

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney, Brendan and the entire Schmanski and Harris extended families

A very brief entry to mention that Tori has over 500 loving and caring people who have registered to her site.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank 2 people real quick: Dries Buytaert (and his community). He is the main author and maintainer of Drupal (sofware powering most of pray4tori.com). It's free, it's open source and we love it.

Also, I wanted to thank Robb Perry again for his amazing contributions. He helped design the artistic aspect of the web site. He is the one who placed Tori's big eyes on the top left that Kara and the others like so much. He is also guilty of designing the shirts that Tim had made.

Not only does open source work, here we are also enjoying open design and open marketing. Great contributions everyone! Keep the content coming and we will keep the light on for you all.

Tori: good night and I will see you tomorrow morning!

Love,
-Guy

PS: There is no way it is past 2:30am again but yet it is!

Hello everyone,

I spent some of my day experimenting with bracelet and donation displays for use at convenience stores, retailers, schools or basically anywhere there might be people. I believe the displays turned out very nicely and they are now located at several gas stations in the north Orem area. The concept would work great in basically any town or city.

The display consists of two clear plastic containers taped together with an informational display page on Tori taped over them. One container has 50-60 bracelets in it and the other is for the donations per bracelet. Here are pictures of the front and back. Notice the bracelet taped on top of the lid as well. I bought the containers at my local Family Dollar store and I'm sure any of you could fabricate a similar display. The listed bracelet price can also be altered depending on your area and needs ($2, $3, $4, $5, etc..).

I would like to offer my assistance in providing the needed bracelets and the informational display page on Tori to ANYONE out there wanting to set something like this up in his or her neighborhood or community. This is a tremendous opportunity for anyone interested and looking for ideas on how to help support Tori. Again, I will supply ALL of the needed bracelets and your only responsibilities would be to create and place the displays, gather the donations as needed and monitor the bracelet supplies. This is a pretty straight forward approach.

A simple, single donation container without bracelets could also be created and in this case I would supply the informational display page on Tori.

If there are any takers on this offer please send an email to donate2tori@pray4tori.com with your name, address and telephone number and I will coordinate with you directly. Based on your location, the bracelets and informational display page on Tori could be picked up at my home in Orem or delivered to you. We obviously want to closely track each and every person volunteering to make sure all of the donation displays are genuine.

Thanks for listening and I am hoping many of you take us up on this offer!! We would probably do more of it ourselves but our time is more directly centered around Tori at this moment as it should be.

Thanks again,

Tim, Maria, Tori, Whitney, Brendan and the entire, extended Schmanski Family

Marylin is organizing a fundraiser on Saturday, 20th of August.

You can find all the details about here: Marylin's Fundraiser afternoon.

Let's all go!
Will see you there,
-Guy

The site was unavailable for a few hours today. We noticied around 1:55pm MST.

The hosting company was working on it all afternoon and it came back online around 6pm MST.

Please accept your apologizes for the inconvenience, We will try to find out what the root cause of the outage was and will let you know.

Thank you,
-pray4tori.com