ARLINGTON — Some might call it luck or fate.
Katie Zook, a 22-year-old on a church mission project in Haiti, happened to crawl under a table when the massive Jan. 12 earthquake struck.
She survived.
Four others in the same building, including the Indiana missionary she was talking to when the temblor hit, were killed by the building’s collapse.
Katie Zook was on the building’s fourth floor, but ended up in its basement, trapped in rubble. She was able to grasp a plastic bottle and used it to tap out a signal that she was alive.
“If you look at pictures of the building, there’s no table that could have saved her,” her father Greg Zook said Wednesday.
“It’s really just a pocket of life there where her boss, who was just a few feet away, was not in that pocket of life. If you call that luck or fate, she would probably be more comfortable with calling it divine protection.”
Some people tell his daughter that she was brave, he said, but she doesn’t feel that way.
“The reason Katie feels she lived is to use her life to be a blessing to other people,” he said. “It’s her intention to give back in whatever way she can.”
The injuries to the left side of her body included a collapsed left lung, nerve injures to her arm and shoulder, compression fractures and ligament damage to her spine and a left leg that was crushed and swollen.
She was flown to a Florida hospital, where she remained for three weeks, including 14 days in an intensive care unit.
From there she was flown by air ambulance, a private jet with a doctor and nurse on board, to Seattle to be treated at Harborview Medical Center.
There, doctors discovered the ligament damage to her back, and fused two vertebrae to help her heal.
Now, a little more than a month after she left Harborview, she is recovering well, her father said. She has physical therapy once a week to help improve the strength and mobility of her left arm. She wears a brace to support her back and uses a cane to help with walking until her muscles become stronger.
Although his daughter doesn’t like to talk about the earthquake, she has been speaking to groups about her experience of living and working with people in Haiti, people whom she admires for their resiliency.
“Now that there is such an ongoing crisis … she wants to continue to raise awareness,” Greg Zook said.
Members of the Arlington Free Methodist Church responded to her talk on Sunday with applause and a standing ovation, said Verline Elmore, senior pastor.
The community is rallying around the family. A member of their church, an artist who paints on river rocks, sat bundled up in front of a local store recently, selling her art work as a benefit for the Zook family.
“One person gave her $100 and said give that to the family,” Greg Zook said.
And two of his daughter’s former teachers, Colleen Turk and Beth Trafton, have set up a fund to help the family pay for unexpected costs of travel and medical care from their daughter’s treatment in Florida and Seattle.
The teachers taught a multi-age classroom of first-, second- and third-graders. “Katie was in our classroom for three years,” Turk said. “We wanted to do something to help out.”
Greg Zook said he has been humbled by the community outpouring for his family.
“We don’t know what to do except be thankful … and appreciative,” he said. “We feel very blessed, overwhelmed and very grateful.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Ways to help
A fund has been established to provide financial support to the Zook family.
Checks can be made out to the Bank of America with Zook Family Relief Fund in the memo line. Donations can be dropped off or sent to the bank’s branches in Stanwood, Arlington, Marysville, Quil Ceda and Smokey Point.
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