His wife, Wendy, had already fallen in love with the 8-month-old who had survived broken bones and beatings in a filthy, feces-strewn Wildomar house. Tom and Wendy intended to adopt, but not yet. They were still young themselves, newlyweds not even out of college.

Hopeful nurses watched as Tom followed Wendy into the hushed intensive care unit at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Would Tom's heart melt when he met Kara for the first time, overcome like his wife by the desire to protect the gravely injured child?

Tom awkwardly cradled Kara, looking every bit like a man who lacked experience handling babies. He sat in a rocking chair. Kara clung to his shirt as he and Wendy wept.

Kara's plight incensed and alarmed people across Southern California and beyond. Rattled social workers, medical staff and law enforcement officials described her case as one of the worst-ever child abuse episodes in the Inland region.

Tom and Wendy adopted Kara and changed her name. They agreed to speak on the condition that neither their real names nor other identifying information was revealed, seeking to shield Kara from her abusers and the public.

Kara's biological mother brought her baby to a hospital in March 2001. The mother, then 35, told authorities she had left her 2-year-old daughter and infant Kara with friends in Wildomar, a rural community in southwestern Riverside County.

Kara spent two months living in the squalid Waite Street house before the friends returned the infant to her biological mother, saying she was sick.

At the home, Kara had been punched, shaken and violently slammed. The malnourished infant suffered a broken pelvis and leg. Her throat and tongue were damaged from forced feedings. Insects and rats had bitten her face and body. Her rectum and colon were severely injured from suspected sexual abuse, requiring her to rely on a colostomy bag.

A bacterial infection, possibly caused by a bite or a burn that festered, had ravaged one of her legs and her buttocks. Doctors removed swaths of blackened, dead flesh that they covered with skin grafts harvested from her back.

Four adults, including Kara's biological mother, were convicted of charges ranging from child endangerment to torture, mayhem and child abuse. Although authorities believed Kara's rectal injuries were caused by sexual abuse, no one was charged with molesting her because prosecutors could not prove who inflicted the wounds.

During the trial, a child who had lived at the Wildomar house described watching his mother hold down Kara as another woman in the household sliced into the baby's leg with a box cutter to try to cut away infected flesh.

Donated toys, clothes, baby formula and cash arrived from across the country. Modest offerings brimmed with concern, such as the $5 check from an elderly woman living on Social Security.

An enclosed note read, "I only have a little bit to give but this is just to let you know that I'm thinking of you and I want a good future for you," Wendy recalled.

"I told her, 'We love it. Me and your dad love it. It's beautiful. That's how you came to us. If your leg didn't look like that, we never would have found you,' " Wendy said. "We always tell her that we found each other."

Kara came to live with the couple in May 2001. At first, Tom and Wendy served as foster parents. They adopted Kara after a judge terminated the parental rights of Kara's biological mother later that year.

Had the couple not gotten involved, Kara would have been placed with another foster or adoptive family, or put in an institution for medically fragile children. Social workers say finding homes for sick, disabled or injured children can be challenging.

The skin lacked flexibility, and contracted as it healed, preventing Kara from extending her leg and hampering her development. She could not balance in a sitting position, nor could she crawl.

Kara had physical therapy twice a week, part of a weekly routine of frequent doctor appointments. Her parents had to perform painful stretching exercises on her every morning and night.

After Kara's first birthday, doctors removed her colostomy bag and reattached her colon -- a milestone. They had thought that the severe injuries to her rectum would require Kara to rely on the device for life.

Fear seized Wendy, who viewed Kara as invincible, a miracle baby, a survivor. Now her daughter lay moaning in the hospital as Wendy and Tom paced and cried.

After Kara turned 2, she underwent a second skin graft. Months earlier, doctors had inserted a balloon in her abdomen. Every week, her parents pinned her down and injected saline through her skin, slowly inflating the balloon and stretching her tummy to create more skin that could be used for the second graft.

Trapped in a cast of bandages, Kara had to lie flat for two weeks. Her parents took her to a theater to see the movie "Finding Nemo" lying on her back in a wagon filled with pillows.

"She never complained," Wendy said. "She never complains. Her cries are freaky. They're like silent cries. She cries with her mouth open and her eyes scrunched, but she doesn't make any sound."

"Abusive people can become very distraught and get out of control by the sound of babies crying," said Penelope Trickett, a USC professor of social work and psychology who researches the effect of abuse and neglect on child development.

"This silent crying may have worked for her. As a baby, crying was associated with pain and then, at some point, she cried silently and she didn't get hurt, so she sort of learned to do that," Trickett said.

As doctors tended Kara's wounds, the toddler lagged developmentally. At 9 months, she functioned as a 4-month-old. She was slow to start talking and worked for months with a speech therapist. Tom taught her some basic sign language, such as how to ask for food.

"She went from being behind the curve as far as her developmental milestones, like stacking blocks or riding a tricycle, to being advanced," Tom said.

Like many shaken babies, Kara's pituitary gland was damaged and not producing enough growth hormone. She was about the size of a 2-year-old well past her third birthday, her parents said.

"You would think it would be ingrained in our minds but, I swear, it's like I forget it on purpose," Wendy said. "Not having given birth to her doesn't seem real to me."

Kara speaks matter-of-factly, describing the Disney princesses in her favorite book, propped open on her bed beneath a pink-and-white canopy adorned with more Disney heroines. She stops on the story of Cinderella.

"Her stepmother and sisters were mean to her," Kara said innocently. The torn and threadbare security blanket that Kara took with her to the hospital during her painful surgeries lies nearby.

The bubbly 5-year-old talks about her neighbor's cat, shows off her treasured charm bracelet and drags out her toys during an impromptu tour at her home. She purposefully pulls out her plastic horses, including a wild stallion wedged into a toy barn.

On a nearby wall, photo collages show Kara as an infant, a toddler and a little girl. She smiles in the snapshots, surrounded by grandparents and cousins and pals from pre-school. Birthday and pool parties. Playtime. A first trip to a baseball game.

"I think that when things happen at an age before (children) have language, their memories are never anything they can verbalize. ... But I think they still remember some of it. They remember in different ways. That's what always worries us, what we never know," Wendy said.

Tom hopes the nightmares lurking in his daughter's subconscious remain buried, that the good life she now enjoys will overpower the memories of the appalling abuse she suffered.

USC's Trickett and other child development experts say abused infants carry their painful memories for life as emotions that can be triggered by situations, or even smells or sights.

Some will re-enact the memories during playtime, such as purposely setting a baby doll aside and ignoring it while playing with other dolls, according to Ferol Mennen, an associate professor, researcher and clinician at USC's School of Social Work.

Abused children stand a greater risk of failing to form trusting relationships with caregivers, and might be aggressive and detached. As adults, some struggle with substance abuse and relationships, Mennen said.

"It's possible a lot of those negative effects that one would see would be mitigated by the caring environment that she is in now," Mennen said.

"Some are really resilient, and some have terrible mental health problems," Trickett said. "Some of it has to do with their internal characteristics. A lot has to do with their social support and their relationships."

Wendy and Tom say they answer Kara's questions truthfully, but they give her only the information they think she can process at her young age -- a strategy that Mennen agrees with.

"I haven't decided what I want her to know or not know," Wendy said. "I think what we'll tell her, if anything, is they didn't take care of her enough."

"It's hard. I don't want to keep anything from her that she is going to find out one day, but I also don't want to just dump it on her and expect her to deal with it.... Either knowing or not knowing what happened, it's going to change the way she approaches life," he said.

"I'm afraid that she is just going to find complete disappointment," Wendy said, noting how she wrote but never mailed an angry letter to Kara's biological mother, urging her to straighten out her life.

Kara's parents say they don't hate Kara's abusers. But Wendy sometimes bristles when she talks about the four, especially Kara's biological mother, angry that she is out of prison even as Kara continues to suffer the consequences of the abuse.

She always intended to adopt, driven by the need to soothe lives torn by abuse and neglect. She and Tom worry about those children they can't help.

When parents fail, other relatives, neighbors or friends must take action, stepping in and reporting possible abuse, Wendy said. If someone had acted sooner, perhaps Kara would not have suffered so much, she said.

Wendy and Tom remain thankful for the doctors, nurses, county social workers and prosecutors who protected Kara, who helped mend her wounds and who held her abusers accountable.

At school, a few classmates have asked about Kara's scars. But they don't tease her, and they typically drop the subject quickly. Some parents will carry it further, trying to pry details from Kara's parents even as their daughter listens.

She gets along well with schoolmates. She loves spending time with her grandparents and other relatives. She loves her younger sibling, and likes to play the big sister, showing how she can brush her own teeth or tie her shoes.

Her grateful parents have kept the gifts and cards sent by well-wishers when Kara was first hospitalized. The donated money is in a trust fund for her college expenses.

The never-ending doctors appointments. The surgeries. The roiling emotions as they watch Kara suffer. Tom and Wendy don't see any of it as a sacrifice.

Kara became their daughter the day she came home, Tom explains. They do what all other parents should to try to enrich her life, to soothe her hurts and help her thrive.

"Our life was so different when we took her, but now it's so much for the better. I could never imagine life without her," Wendy said. "Everybody always says she's so lucky, she's so lucky. We're definitely the ones that got lucky."

This is cache, read story here