WHAT will it take for fate to leave Heather Little-White alone? On Friday April 16 a hoodlum on a red bike wrote the latest chapter in the continuing chronicle of faith, fortitude and frustration that is the life of a woman who says, justifiably, she has now had enough.

“Yesterday, I had another horrifying experience and (was) again a victim of crime in Jamaica,” Little-White, the storied nutritionist and columnist tells friends in an e-mail letter, hours after her third robbery in just over 10 years.

“Today, I feel like a truck ran over me. I now contemplate my next move as I think I have had more than enough,” she says, the words inadequate to mask the pain and the tears that so severely test the resolve of this steely rural daughter of Somerton, St James.

It was early Friday afternoon. Little-White had withdrawn a sizeable sum from her account at the Premier Plaza branch of the Bank of Nova Scotia, to do shopping at Jo Jo’s Farm Market at the intersection of Waterloo Road and South Avenue in St Andrew to cater for a major job the next day. Sitting in the van, her handbag with money in her lap, she suddenly felt an arm around her neck. The bag was snatched from her grasp, and as suddenly as he appeared, the robber disappeared on his motorcycle. Little-White is sure she was trailed from the bank.

Two years before that, she had suffered a break-in at her home from which valuables were stolen. But these two events, frightening as they were, pale in comparison to the first event on a cruel Tuesday night, July 6, 1999.

Full of life and brimming with intellectual and physical energy, how could she have known when she left home that fateful July morning that before the day was out, her life would be changed forever by a gunman’s bullet that must have come from the pit of hell itself? And in, of all places, affluent Norbrook, upper St Andrew, where the only explosion to be heard was that of an ailing motor vehicle ‘back-firing’.

The strong legs that walked the hills of rural St James and kept pace with the Reggae Boyz on their historic journey to World Cup glory in France 1998 would now be confined to a wheelchair.

On her way from work, she decided to drop off a Daily Word at the home of her friends, Carlene and Patrick Brissett in Norbrook, St Andrew. She was travelling overseas the next day and wanted to make sure they would receive the booklet before she left the island, she recounted for the Desmond Allen Interviews published in the Sunday Observer, November 14, 2004.

It was 9:05 pm as Little-White approached the home. She saw that several other cars were already there and a group from the Swallowfield Chapel was having a prayer meeting. Her cellular phone rang and she stopped to answer. It was the security company, Ranger, informing her that the alarm at her Heather Little-White and Associates office at Kensington Crescent had not been armed.

At that moment, she became aware that two men had come up on either side of the car. The windows were still up and from lip-reading, she gathered that the one on the driver’s side was saying: “Police, come out!” He was also brandishing a gun.

Drawing upon her faith, Little-White fought to remain calm. Should she comply and risk being raped and harmed otherwise, if these men were not cops? Or should she take evasive action? She decided on the latter. She drove into the Brissetts’ driveway, desperately honking the horn for attention. Suddenly she felt a stinging pain in her shoulder. The gunman had fired at her. The bullet ripped through her shoulder and lodged in her spine.

“Instantly, I could remember, my legs went dead. However, I was still composed but could not control the car and it coasted down into the wall,” she said, reliving the horror of that

dreadful night.

Upon hearing the shot, the prayer group rushed out of the house, but by then the murderous villains had disappeared. Someone called her parents and rushed her to the University Hospital of the West Indies where the emergency team was waiting.

From her hospital bed, she recalled, she saw Mikey Wallace of the Chalice band being wheeled into the emergency room. But alas! He did not make it. She later learnt that the two men who had attacked her were suspects in the killing of Wallace. Three days later, a doctor brought the grim pronouncement: she would never walk again.

“I just smiled and said, ‘What’s the next phase?'”

Five days after the shooting, she was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami for further treatment. There they confirmed the earlier prognosis that she would not walk again. But the hospital counselling service was magnificent and they prepared her well for life as a paraplegic, she said.

“If I did not go to Jackson Memorial, I do not think I would feel as positive about my situation as I do today.”

After six weeks of intensive therapy, Little-White left the hospital in Miami and came home to start life as a paraplegic. Out of that tragic event, an indomitable spirit of faith and courage had soared, triumphant and forgiving.

“Part of my life now is being an advocate for the disabled community, which is significant, especially when you look at the rate of shootings and accidents that we are experiencing as a country. I challenge companies that do not have access for disabled people to rectify it,” she told the Sunday Observer in the interview.

Little-White afterwards lent her considerable talent as an advisor to the Paraplegic Outreach Development Foundation, a member of the Combined Disabilities Association and a member of the Advisory Council for Persons with Disabilities, for which she earned the national honour — the Order of Distinction (Officer Class) — in 2001.

“I don’t see myself as any less than other human beings,” she said, revealing that she was growing even more hopeful when she noted that she was gaining strength in her legs, feeling movement in her feet and was able to tap her toes.

“I still have my faith and

I will walk again!” she promised her interviewer with unmistakable conviction.

But the lastest robbery shook her to the core. “Please be careful,” she pleaded to friends. “The monster of crime has over-run most of the good we have come to know about Jamaica… Please pray for me and most importantly, Jamaica!”

Bloodied but yet unbowed, Little-White, as she did after 1999, sought solace in activism. “Through prayer and right action, we have to claim back our country. I will be starting a campaign for that — Jamaicans United Against Crime,” she announced.

That Friday is clearly not going to be the final chapter in the activism of Heather Edecca Little-White.