VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — In 2015, four year old Chloe Garcia and her family were doing what they did every Halloween, lighting the holiday pumpkin.
But this time was different, tragically different. There was a flash fire that burned her face, neck and arm. She spent weeks in intensive care.
“She had 12 surgeries at CHKD and she had about 8 or 9 surgeries at Shriners hospital in Ohio,” said her mom Melanie Reyes.
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l went along with the family to the Shriners Children's hospital in Cincinnati where Chloe went for additional treatment a year later.
“The hospital was pretty tough just seeing how her skin looked the scraping they did,” Reyes told me in 2016.
I watched as they custom made a mask for the little girl, her only hope to keep the scars from distorting her facial features.
“My hope is that she is a normal little girl and one day this is just a bad nightmare gone away,” Reyes told me in Cincinnati.
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The nightmare has faded and so have many of Chloe’s scars.
I caught up with the 13 year old Chesapeake student with her family and friends at Hunt Club Farms in VA Beach.
“I like to play football a lot and video games and hang out with my friends,” said Garcia.
“She’s blessed. She’s got a ton of great girlfriends, her teachers adore her. They bring letters to the house the next year saying how much they loved her and she was a joy in the classroom,” said her mom.
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But the past few years haven’t always been easy.
“She’ll have days where people don’t say anything and then she’ll have days where they’re like what happened to your face,” said Reyes.
“It doesn’t really bother me that much, I’m just like chill with it. I don’t care if people ask me or anything,” said Garcia.
When she’s done growing a little older, Chloe will have laser treatments to correct some of the lingering scars. But for now, she’s found a way to work around them.
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“She’s been wearing makeup and she does a great job she does it herself, all those YouTube videos but she covers it pretty well,” said her mom.
And even though the tragic accident happened at Halloween, her mom tells me she hasn’t let it ruin a holiday that Chloe always loved.
“Now we have a bunch of her friends come over we make candy apples we made macaroons we just did this last week, and everybody paints pumpkins,”
Emerging from a painful tragedy into an inspiring young lady, Chloe Garcia is Positively Hampton Roads.
“She’s a tough cookie, nobody’s gonna tear her down, she’s a fighter, she’s strong,” said her mom.
