Passages: Blind teen charts independent course in sea of drugstore aisles

Christina Parra brushed her red-tipped cane across the carpet at the entrance to Walgreens. She tapped her way past the shopping carts, past fake nails and lipsticks in pinks and mauves she could only imagine.

Christina, a tiny slip of a 16-year-old with a long ponytail and two prosthetic brown eyes, had visited this store several times in preparation for this moment: She was shopping. As if she were by herself.

Overhead, generic love songs flowed through the speakers of the North Highlands store. Christina reached the end of aisle 1-A and turned right, feeling her way past smooth bottles of liquid soap, toward the individual soap bars.

Her mobility teacher, Alicia Zermeno, followed behind, staying silent. Christina, softspoken but determined, had chosen this assignment: She wanted to buy a bar of soap to bring to summer camp. A simple goal. Not necessarily an easy one.

Christina was 18 months old when she was diagnosed with bilateral retinal blastoma – cancerous tumors inside both her eyes.

Her parents, Susie, an underwriter at AAA, and Mario, a custodian with the state, were devastated. Christina was their only child.

"It was the worst nightmare that any parent could go through," Susie Parra recalls. Their dreams shrank into one urgent desire: Let their daughter survive.

Surgeons removed Christina's left eye immediately; a few years later, they removed the right. She'd gone into that latter surgery clutching her favorite Minnie Mouse doll; doctors let her hold the anesthesia mask to her face by herself.

Since then, Christina has remained cancer-free and maintains, in many ways, a normal childhood. She reads Beverly Cleary books in Braille and shops for purses at flea markets. Her favorite colors are pink (she's heard it's girlie) and yellow (she likes the way the name sounds). She speaks English and Spanish and is studying French.

Activities other kids take for granted – riding the bus, crossing the street, shopping at a drugstore – still pose plenty of challenges. She rarely lets them get in her way.

Christina was a quiet, timid kindergartner when she started working with Zermeno. The teacher showed the little girl how to find her classroom by tapping her cane along a lawn's edge. She learned to count driveways while walking to a certain address; she learned to sit behind the driver, so she could know when to pull the cord to get the bus to stop.

But for a long time, shopping still seemed scary. How would she ever navigate those vast aisles, filled with row after row of unseeable products?

Finally, earlier this spring, Christina told Zermeno she was ready to shop on her own.

Together, they took inventory at Walgreens. Over the course of several visits, Zermeno told Christina the kinds of products each aisle held; Christina took dilligent notes on her Braille computer.

"I have a little more courage now," she said.

And so it was, on Monday, that her fingers came to rest on the bars of soap. She felt her way down to a lower shelf, until she located the one she wanted: Walgreens generic, scented like Irish Spring.

Soap in one hand, cane in the other, she made her way up 1-A. She turned left at the shopping carts near the door and tapped her way to the register.

"Sixty-four cents," the clerk said. Christina handed her a dollar bill. Zermeno swelled with pride.

A few years from now, Christina will graduate from Rio Linda High School. She plans to attend an independent living skills program in the Bay Area, then a four-year college in San Francisco.

From there, she's thinking of becoming an accountant or a court reporter, as well as volunteering with visually impaired children. She'll buy a home and shop for her own groceries.

Dreams that once felt so improbable, seemed, on Monday, to be on the verge of coming true.

Christina clutched her bar of soap, then headed out the door.

About the writer:

• "Passages" is a Metro feature that looks at special moments in the lives of kids, from first haircuts to first prom dresses. If you know of such an event coming up, please contact Jocelyn Wiener at jwiener@sacbee. com or call (916) 321-1967. To see previous stories in this series, please go to www.sacbee.com/passages