- Linda Stansberry
- Cadence and Calahan Figas help their aunt Wendi Locatelli remove her prosthetic leg.
The last thing Wendi Figas Locatelli remembered was falling asleep. The 34-year old mother of three, who grew up in Freshwater and attended Eureka High School, did not know that her body was fighting off a lethal infection, that doctors had told her husband to notify the family to come visit her one last time and that she had a 1 percent chance of surviving.
“My husband sat by my side and said, ‘Just take care of yourself, I’ll take care of the kids,’” she told a rapt auditorium of elementary school students at Pacific Union School on Monday, Oct. 8. “I remember him saying that over and over again. I was in a coma. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I just remembered going to sleep.”
When Locatelli woke up that day in early May of 2016, her right arm was dark black, and her fingers were “shriveled.” Her kidneys no longer worked. She had been struck with a septic infection several days earlier, the cause of which is still unknown. Surgeons removed both of her legs, her right arm below the elbow and the fingers of her left hand.
“You can see that I look a little different than most people look,” she told the students, gesturing towards her prosthetic legs, which are attached to her muscular thighs and allow her to stand, walk and run at a fast shuffle. “I have robot legs, a robot hand and what we call ‘my paw.’”
She waves her left hand at the students and a ripple of laughter breaks out across the auditorium. Locatelli smiles with them. The speech, her first since her surgery a year and a half ago, was a favor to family friend Barb Hooper, secretary at Pacific Union. Locatelli, who was working as a dental hygienist in Woodland, hasn’t returned to work since her illness but is interested becoming an inspirational speaker who can help demystify disability and prosthetics for children. Hooper and others were active in organizing a fundraiser to help Locatelli and her family with medical expenses. She wore a T-shirt with the word “G.L.O.W.” on the front, an acronym for “God Loves Our Wendi,” the slogan for Locatelli’s boosters.
"She is the kind of girl who's an inspiration for everyone," said Hooper. "She's always been a leader."