A resilient face aglow with grace

There is a vibrant smile beneath the blue eyes of Victoria Ruvolo as she tells the story of the last, most trying year of her life. It is the same smile she often wore when she lived through it.

Because Ruvolo doesn't remember much about it, she has little to say about the November night a 20-pound frozen turkey was hurled through her windshield, crushing her face and nearly killing her. But she gleefully remarked about how lovely her 15-year-old niece sang at the recital she attended that night.

"She always blows me away when she sings," said Ruvolo, 45, of Lake Ronkonkoma. "She definitely does not get that from my side of the family. We can't hold a note at all."

For most people, the compassion Ruvolo showed the Huntington teen who nearly killed her was a rare and inspirational thing. But to those who know Ruvolo, it was just Vicky being Vicky.

"The person you see is what she always was," said her sister, Jo-Marie Brennan of Oceanside. "And we stood to lose her."

Hours after watching Cushing be led away in handcuffs in a Riverhead courtroom Monday to serve a six-month jail sentence, for a few minutes, Ruvolo looked back.

"I just thank God that I am here, and that I do wake up and see another day," Ruvolo said from an office at St. Charles Hospital, where she was joined by her family. "I try not to look backward. I just look forward."

Even from inches away, there is hardly a visible hint of what Ruvolo's face endured 11 months ago. But she continues to deal with the effects. "My face aches me every single day," said Ruvolo. "The cold bothers me a lot."

She also cannot feel her upper gums or front teeth.

Worse than the physical scars are the emotional ones. "I'm not as fearless as I used to be," she admits, noting that she chooses to stay home most of the time and avoids driving at night.

She lost a month of her life in a coma, unconscious over Thanksgiving.

Still, she says, "There is no resentment."

Despite her limitations, relatives say the progress Ruvolo has made is extraordinary, and a testament to her determination to return to her life and independence - even when it was far from reach.

"Every day, she kept doing things in the house," said Brennan, who helped care for her sister for months in her Oceanside home. "[She'd say,] 'See, I can do this. See, I can use the dishwasher. I can go home.' "

"At one point I had to tell her, 'You know what Vicky, I love you ... But you look like a Mack truck hit you,' " Brennan said, as Ruvolo laughed. "After I told her that, she settled down."

Ruvolo set a target date of a few months away to return home, where she lived only with her beloved pets - three cats and a dog, whose care was entrusted to neighbors.

It was her reliance on others that was the hardest part of her recovery.

"I was always taking care of everyone else," said Ruvolo, a matriarch of sorts to her extended family. "Now someone had to take care of me."

But they were all too willing, relatives said. On her 45th birthday in March, her family even threw her a birthday party, a public unveiling of sorts.

A month later, she returned home.

In six months, Cushing will do the same. "I hope he does turn his life around. That would be the greatest gift," said Ruvolo, who plans to "keep up" with Cushing's progress.

For now, Ruvolo looks mostly to the return of Thanksgiving. It won't be the first time since her injury that she will have turkey.

Her sister remembered serving it for her, apologetically, last spring. "I said, 'I feel bad making this,'" Brennan recalled. "And she said, 'Why? I love turkey. It's wasn't the turkey's fault.' "