GRANITE FALLS — For Amanda Skorjanc, all it takes is an unexpected noise — a strong gust of wind, the buzz of a low-flying plane — to trigger memories of the Oso mudslide.
That day last spring, the sound was like a truck hitting a rumble strip, and what followed changed her life forever. She saw nearby houses explode, a neighbor’s chimney come through her front door, lights in her home shake and flicker. Then everything went dark.
The tsunami of mud and debris flung both her and her 5-month-old son, Duke Suddarth, hundreds of feet from their home. Skorjanc somehow was able to hold on to her infant son. “I did not let that baby go for one second,” she said.
They were trapped in debris, unable to move. Rescuers used chain saws to free her while her baby turned blue in her arms.
At Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, Skorjanc was swaddled in bandages and casts, her left eye bruised and swollen. Her injuries were similar to those of someone in a high-speed car crash: a fractured ankle, two broken legs, broken bones in her left arm and a fracture near her eye.
After an interview a few weeks after the mudslide, Skorjanc’s photo and her descriptions were picked up by national and international media outlets.
People sent cards and said they were praying for her recovery. Schoolchildren drew get-well cards and posters, some of which are displayed in the Granite Falls-area home where Skorjanc and her fiancé, Ty Suddarth, moved last fall.
Next weekend will mark one year since the March 22, 2014, mudslide and Skorjanc said she is still surprised to see her name, as well as those of Duke and Suddarth, mentioned in follow-up news accounts from as far away as Britain and Australia.
“It’s still unreal to me, it’s very humbling,” she said. “We’re just a tiny family in a tiny little town. And our story has reached all the way around the world.”
10 surgeries
Like the media attention, Skorjanc’s medical problems persist a year later, even after 10 surgeries. Duke will undergo surgery next week.
Skorjanc left Harborview last spring in a wheelchair, with her legs and arm in protective casts and braces. She was told she would need to use a wheelchair for about 10 weeks to allow time for the pins, rods and plates securing her bones and joints to do their work, to allow her to heal.
Using a wheelchair for mobility and staying off her feet were a hard adjustment for Skorjanc, just 25 years old and a new mom.
In June, Skorjanc, an avid Seahawks fan, was wheeled into the team’s training center in Renton, joined by Suddarth and Duke. She got to meet cornerback Richard Sherman and asked him to sign her arm with a Sharpie.
“Right on the dotted line,” she told him, referring to the long, pink surgery scar with needlepoint-like dots above and below — the remaining imprints of her stitches.
“He said I was one tough mama.”
By July, Skorjanc had shed most of her medical paraphernalia, except for a toe-to-knee black boot on her left leg. It had been her goal to participate in a July 27 Oso Strong fundraising run and walk, on a bright, sunny day in Arlington.
Accompanied by Duke and Suddarth, it took Skorjanc an hour and 55 minutes to finish the 3.2-mile walk. As she entered the home stretch, obviously in pain, people lined the course to cheer and yell encouragement. She crossed the finish line, grinning, exhausted and wiping away tears, from both the physical grind of the walk and the emotion of the event.
Earlier this month, Skorjanc smiled as she talked about that day. “They said I pushed it too hard last year.”
Even now, each day presents a new boundary to push through. On some days, she dreads getting out of bed, anticipating jolts of pain caused by the medical armor in her body. “It takes all I have to take that first step,” she said.
One thing helps, she said. “Little Duke,” now 17 months old. “Once I see him smiling, there really is no pain. My heart is so full of love.”
Like his mom, Duke was injured while being violently knocked about by the mudslide’s debris. He had a fractured skull when he first arrived at Harborview, his condition critical.
The skull fracture and trauma caused his brain to swell, pinching his optic nerve, affecting his left peripheral vision. Last month, doctors said that Duke needed surgery to fully repair and mend the fracture.
Skorjanc couldn’t hold back her tears. She soon felt a small hand gently patting her arm — Duke trying to comfort her.
Wedding plans
Skorjanc met Suddarth not long after moving to the Seattle area in July 2012. “I was 23 and no kids,” she said. They quickly became a couple. Duke was born on Oct. 6, 2013. Despite their strong relationship, Suddarth would sometimes tease Amanda that they weren’t getting married for decades.
All that changed in the confusing, emotionally charged aftermath of the disaster. Suddarth, who had left home the morning of the mudslide to run an errand, initially didn’t know whether Amanda or Duke survived. That night, Suddarth asked Amanda’s dad for permission to marry her. Suddarth “told me he almost lost us one time and he didn’t want to think about losing us again,” Skorjanc said.
On April 26, 2014, dressed in a blue hospital gown, he proposed to Skorjanc in her Harborview room, presenting an engagement ring from his great-grandmother’s wedding set. It was a family heirloom — especially meaningful to a couple who recovered little from their Oso home other than one of Ty’s “12th Man” Seahawks shirts.
Suddarth, 36, works as a construction foreman. They set their wedding date: Aug. 15, 2015. Since January, Skorjanc’s days have been filled with the details of wedding planning: trips to the florist, consulting with the designer of her wedding dress, professional photos of the couple.
The approaching wedding was a welcome distraction from news that she would have to go back to Harborview in February for her 10th surgery. Last year’s surgical fixes to her left leg caused her calf to grow rigid, allowing no flexibility. Surgeons had to realign the metal and screws that held her foot in place, said Amanda’s mom, Susan Skorjanc.
So Skorjanc is back in a wheelchair and cannot put weight on her foot. Her left leg is sealed in thick protective bandages, from her foot to her knee. She’ll be in a cast, and off her feet, for another six weeks.
“It’s like a roller coaster,” she said. “Before the slide I was completely fine. I never had a broken bone in my life. The slide hit. Then, three limbs were broken. I’m healed up, totally independent. One surgery, and I’m totally laid out again. It’s hard emotionally. Being in that hospital brought Ty and I right back to that day — a nightmare deja vu.”
A dream of normalcy
Duke’s surgery is scheduled for next Thursday at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Skorjanc was separated from him last year for about 10 days while being treated herself. This time, “I’m not leaving Duke’s side.” Doctors say his fracture should heal in about a year.
Duke is expected to be in the hospital March 22, the anniversary of the disaster, so neither parent plans to attend events that weekend.
Skorjanc said she wants to thank everyone who prayed for her family and those who donated or volunteered after the disaster. If the Oso Strong race is held again this year, “I’m signing up,” she said. “Even if I just have to root people on, I’ll be there.”
With help from her mom, Skorjanc brings Duke to a weekly music class in Marysville. As the day of his surgery nears, she wants to spend as much time with him as she can. Her son bounces up and down to the rhythm of the music, beats on a tambourine, and often walks over to his mom or grandma to sit in their laps. On his feet are black-and-yellow fireman’s boots from which he is nearly inseparable. They were a first birthday present from a firefighter who was with him the day of the mudslide.
Skorjanc sometimes allows herself to think a little beyond the daily demands of family and medical appointments to consider the future. She said she’s ready to have another baby; she and Suddarth hope to have at least two more children. Duke, she said, will be a good big brother, and “I’ll be the best stay-at-home mom I can be.”
When a new Seahawks season arrives, and she can walk again, life might once again begin to return to traditional rituals. A crisp fall Sunday afternoon. An opportunity for her and Suddarth to return to CenturyLink Field. For Skorjanc to morph into her super-fan persona, donning Mardi Gras-like blue-and-green beads, wearing a “big hair” wig and a navy-and-green tutu.
“It’s nice to kind of break the norm and do something that doesn’t make me think about what happened or how much pain I’m in,” she said. “It’s a way to kind of escape.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.
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