Anne Hjelle

A young woman walked into a restaurant last week and sat close enough to get a good look at Anne Hjelle's face. A mountain lion had torn off the left side four years before, leaving it hanging by a flap of skin. Six surgeries hadn't camouflaged the scars. "She saw me and had a deer-in-the-headlights look," said Hjelle, 35, of Mission Viejo. "She quickly got up and moved so she didn't have to look at me." The stranger's reaction didn't hurt Hjelle's feelings.

In her first public appearance since being seriously mauled by a mountain lion at an Orange County wilderness park four months ago, Anne Hjelle told a rapt audience at Crystal Cathedral on Sunday about the struggle for her life -- harrowing moments captured in slow motion in her mind. "There was a flash of movement over my right shoulder," Hjelle, 30, recalled of the Jan. 8 attack that occurred while she was riding a mountain bike at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park.