Leaning against the cinder block wall of a small locker room, their skates at their feet, the two women chatted as if they had been friends all their lives.
They talked of small things and big dreams, of dreams delayed or denied and entwined in the thread that united them at East West Ice Palace in Artesia last week.
Leah Smith is a pediatric heart transplant survivor who adopted five-time world figure skating champion Michelle Kwan as her idol after she saw Kwan perform in a brilliant blue dress more than a decade ago.
Smith, born with an underdeveloped left ventricle, was 11 days old when she received a transplant at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. The life expectancy in such cases then was 10 years, said her mother, Joan Smith.
Leah's new heart gave her life, but her mother believes that Kwan and figure skating gave her a purpose. Leah, now 17, is a home-schooled high school senior who takes college classes and is preparing her solo routine for a skating show back home in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
She must go for checkups every six to eight weeks and for a biopsy once a year, and her mother said tests have shown signs her body might be rejecting the heart. Leah lives every moment fully, whether she's skating, studying, ballroom dancing or advocating for organ donation.
"Michelle has been her inspiration in order to keep staying physically fit and active," said Joan Smith, whose blue eyes are very much like her daughter's.
Kwan has come to personify dignity in the face of shattering disappointment. She was the picture of class when she narrowly finished second to Tara Lipinski at the 1998 Olympics and was stoic again after she finished third at Salt Lake City in 2002.
Her third try, three years ago at Turin, ended when a hip injury forced her to withdraw before she competed or could chat with Smith.
"We were on line to get tickets for the medal ceremony and we were watching 'The Today Show' and they announced it," Leah Smith said.
She and her mother went to Turin through the kindness of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which fulfills the desires of kids who have life-threatening medical conditions. However, her stay was funded only through the first week and the women's final was near the end of the Games, so the Smiths were on their own then.
"We had to sleep in a hotel lobby only once. God kept showing us miracles," said Joan Smith, who found a place to stay through the sister of a pastor at her church.
