Forgiveness and a flying frozen turkey changed Vicky Ruvolo

When you decide there is a greater purpose to your life, it can set events in motion in ways you never imagined. Just ask Vicky Ruvolo.

Six years ago I wrote a column about her ordeal after a teenager on a thoughtless joyride tossed a frozen turkey at the car she was driving on Long Island. The impact shattered her face and nearly killed her. But her reaction to what happened has brought life and renewal to many people.

Ruvolo decided to forgive her assailant, a then-19-year-old Ryan Cushing. She learned all she could about his background, then insisted on pressing for a light sentence. In the emotional courtroom scene that followed, Ruvolo and Cushing tearfully embraced.

The story became widely known in these parts when the late President Gordon B. Hinckley, who then was president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quoted it in a General Conference talk on forgiveness in 2005.

Today, it is fair to say Ruvolo's life is a sum total of the consequences of her decision. "I feel great," she told me in a phone interview. Yes, she has three titanium plates in her left cheek and two in her right. Yes, she now has her "own barometer," in which her face alerts her when the weather is about to change. Her wounds ache at times. But that neither defines nor obsesses her. A forgiving attitude seems to lessen the pain.

"I always thank God that he allowed me to come back so well," she said. "It's truly amazing."

Ruvolo has written a book, together with Attorney Rob Goldman, about her experiences. Titled, "No Room for Vengeance," it is scheduled to be published this fall but is available for pre-order right now on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

Goldman, a criminal defense attorney and clinical psychologist who was tired of seeing "the never-ending revolving door of criminals entering and leaving the criminal justice system," was inspired after reading media reports about her. He and Ruvolo now work together on a program he devised to help troubled young people understand consequences and turn their lives around.

Ruvolo says her story really begins when she was 13 and her older brother died in a drug overdose. A few years later another brother died in a car accident. Then her brother-in-law was shot to death, and then, when she was 22, her nephew died when run over while riding his bike. Later, at age 35, she lost a baby eight months into her pregnancy.