Mark Maeser's blog

I see that Tim already beat me to reporting what I saw yesterday. But I felt like it was important to mention here so that there would be more than one witness that what Tim has been saying is correct.

The Schmanski's lived next door to us in Lindon for the past three years. They were the greatest neighbors we could ever hope for. My wife, Ann, and I have visited Tori, Tim and Maria a few times at the hospital now. We've been in to see and talk to Tori twice. The first time was June 26 and then yesterday. Both Ann and I were amazed at how great Tori looks and in our eyes she has made a lot of progress.

At one point in our visit, Maria started joking about all of Tori's text messaging which resulted in an $80 bill. This produced on Tori's face a full blown, both sides of the mouth, can see her beautiful white teeth -smile! I realized then that Tori hadn't been outside hanging out with the old people in the neighborhood because she was inside chatting or text messaging with her friends! Back to the smile...it looked to me like I could see her attempting to laugh. Prior to that she had smiled a few times, but those were kind of limited to one side of her face. Those had come from talk of her grades and things like that. At that big smile, Ann said "Oh my heck! There's Tori!" You can tell my wife has been in Utah too long.

We have no doubt she is aware of what is going on. She recognizes people and reacts differently to different people. It was her mom that she smiled so beautifully for yesterday. And we were lucky enough to be there.