No obstacle is too challenging for Scout

There were 22 young faces staring back at Joe and Susi Bassett that day in the orphanage at Nanjing, China. Some were vacant, some were desperate, and one spoke loudest of all without saying a word.

"I just knew that little girl was supposed to be mine," Susi said. "I looked at her and said, 'She needs me.'"

The little girl was 7 years old. She weighed about 25 pounds, the result of eating nothing but small portions of rice and crackers her entire life. She had no schooling in the orphanage, only forced labor and beatings. She had never heard music, never read a book or a magazine.

Fate often works inexplicably, though, and so it was in this case.

The Bassetts were in China to complete the adoption of another child they would take back to their home in Michigan. That already had been done, at a different orphanage. They were in Nanjing as a favor to another couple back in the United States, taking pictures of a child those people planned to adopt.

But Susi Bassett couldn't ignore what the voice inside was telling her to do.

"She had such a needy face. I got to the door and looked at my husband and said, 'We have to come back here. We have to have that little girl,'" she said.

They didn't know at the time that with all the other things already stacked against her, the girl had just one leg. When they found out later, they didn't care. Susi figured that just confirmed how badly the child needed the love she and her husband would provide. Ten months later they returned to pick up the little girl and a younger boy, who they also met at that orphanage.

The abandoned child with the needy face was reborn as Scout Bassett.

And on a wet, chilly Saturday morning on the streets of Tampa, the now 21-year-old woman crossed the finish line in the 5k race at the Gasparilla Distance Classic in 39:48, jostling through the thousands of runners in what amounted to a warmup for her race in today's half-marathon.

"I've never been in a 5k race this big," she said.

She was bumped by another runner early in the race and went sprawling onto Platt Street, but she hopped right back up and kept going.

As we shall see, nothing keeps her down for long.

All she had known

The Scout Bassett you see today is a vibrant young athlete, a junior at UCLA who competes in triathlons and embraces the symbolism she represents. She may only stand 4-foot-8, but she has the stature of a giant.

"She's my hero; she inspires me," Joe Bassett said. "I had a traumatic brain injury 23 years ago and there are still some mornings where I have migraines and would rather not get out of bed. But I go into her room and see her (prosthetic) legs propped up and I think, 'How can I not get moving?'"

Scout - named for a character in the novel "To Kill A Mockingbird" - lost her right leg after suffering severe burns before she was a year old. Shortly after that, she was abandoned at the orphanage. It was basically a warehouse where she slept in a room with up to 40 other children, ranging from toddlers up to age 10.

"There were unbelievable hardships," she said. "I was malnourished, and a lot of times we were beaten with a stick or a shoe whether we misbehaved or not.

"They would take me into the bathtub every so often in hot, hot water and hold my head under the water for the longest time. I remember thinking each time, 'This is the end of it.' But you have to understand - this was normal for me. This was all I knew. We did laundry, mopped and scrubbed floors, cleaned dishes. Basically, we did whatever they told us to do."

She had never heard of the United States when the Bassetts returned to take her to Michigan (they have since moved to California). She had never ridden in a car, stayed in a hotel, eaten in a restaurant and certainly had never flown in an airplane. Instead of being wide-eyed with excitement and a sense of adventure, Scout was terrified.

She cried. She fought. She screamed.

Since she couldn't speak English, just translating her basic needs became a challenge.

"They took me from the only thing I had known in my entire life," she said. "People ask me, 'Oh, weren't you thrilled to be with these parents who loved you?' It wasn't like that, though.

"All the years and horrific experiences we had in the orphanage, as bad as it was, it was also our reality. For people to take us out of there and not know what was coming, it was hard to take."

She learned to adjust, though. The girl who couldn't speak English when she arrived finished second in a statewide spelling bee when she was in the fifth grade. And along the way, she found something else.

She found sports.

Determination paid off

At the small Christian high school she attended, the tiny girl with one leg wouldn't be kept down. She played tennis and golf. She was on the softball team, but the coach never put her in a game.

"She told me she had to play the best players because winning was too important, and that's why I couldn't play," Scout said.

A visit to Orlando led to a meeting with a representative of the Challenged Athletes Foundation. She learned there was a world where they would put her in the game and that the only requirement for winning was having the willingness to try. Soon, she was competing in triathlons (she had to learn to swim). She learned to change out her "bike" leg with the "running" leg.

The girl who was afraid to travel was soon jetting around the country, doing speaking engagements and appearing at events like Gasparilla. She is poised, confident and driven. When she graduates from UCLA, she might go back to China and the orphanage. The original building has been torn down and replaced, but the trip itself would provide closure.

"I think it would be an incredible journey to go back," she said. "I'd love to see a part of my culture and heritage I never got to see when I was there. I'd be an outsider looking in, and not the other way around."

Who can know for sure what would have happened if Susi Bassett had ignored what her instincts were telling her to do that day at the orphanage. Most people would have found a million reasons to do just that, but that tiny face that spoke without speaking wouldn't let her forget.

"She could have wound up in prostitution or been a beggar out on the street," Susi said. "China thinks of those children as throwaways. But this is like a miracle with her. Friends had advised us not go back and get her because older children have so many psychological needs, but I just knew God wanted the child to be with us."