On April 14, 2002, Alvaro Uribe Vélez, then president-elect of Colombia due to take office in one month, travels to Barranquilla. Blanca Rodriguez Charris, age 16, is finishing her after-school job cleaning the small police station next to the bridge that was in the path of the presidential caravan. Blanca notices a satchel on the edge of the bridge, but pays little attention. When the caravan passes, a bomb in the satchel detonates. Another, hidden in a fish peddler's cart below the bridge, fortunately malfunctions.
Blanca receives multiple fragmentation wounds and loses her leg above the knee. An infant on the bus and the police chief are also injured. Blanca's mother, Luz Charris, feels an incredible rumble as the concussion hits her small home. Roof tiles fly off houses near the bridge. She crosses the bridge, passing a mangled body. Arriving at the police station, she suddenly realizes the body is wearing her daughter's school dress. She returns to find Blanca near death. Mrs. Charris stays by Blanca's bed day and night at the local hospital for several days.
Jeff Frederick from Tallahassee and Debbie Plescia, from Orlando in a HUCO medical mission travel to the city on February 2004 to cast Blanca for an AK prosthesis and returned in August 2004 to successfully fit the leg prosthesis. The 18-year-old comes to the clinic to walk for the first time in two years. It is hard to tell who is smiling more as she walks away on the new prosthesis.
