News Channel 8 report

PINELLAS PARK - She loved animals, liked to show off in her dad's Trans Am, looked forward to vacations down the Jersey Shore.

As a child growing up in Philadelphia, Terri Schiavo dreamed of running her own dog-grooming business. As she got older, the goal was to be a veterinarian.

``Growing up, Terri was an animal freak,'' her mother, Mary Schindler, recalled.

``I had every animal you can think of in our house: Terri's turtles, Terri's rabbits, Terri's gerbil and a yellow lab named Bucky,'' Schindler said. ``I don't have a problem with animals, but I don't like them in my house. But we had them anyway.''

Terri, who died on March 31, 2005 at 41, was the first of the Schindler children, one year and one month older than her brother, Bobby, and 3 1/2 years older than Suzanne.

``Terri and Bobby were close, but one day I heard this muffled voice coming from a suitcase,'' Schindler said. ``Bobby had apparently locked her in the suitcase, and when she came out she was beet red from screaming. They must have been playing.''

A few days later, Terri did something completely out of character, her mother said.

``I heard a bump. She pushed Bobby down the steps. Thank God I just had those steps carpeted.''

According to Bobby, the suitcase incident is blown way out of proportion.

``We were just fooling around, and she hid from me in the suitcase,'' Bobby, 40, recalled of the incident perhaps 35 years ago that still dominates family lore.

``Then I told her I didn't know how to open the latch. The suitcase was flopping all over, and I ran downstairs'' to hide, he said.

Another time, when they were older and Terri got to drive that black Trans Am with the pop-off roof panels, she ran over a cat, Bobby recalled.

``Terri was driving home, and she comes in hysterical that she hit and killed a cat,'' Bobby said.

So he and his father retraced her route, found the cat's corpse and hid it, he said.

``We came back and told Terri she must have missed it, and she went back to see for herself,'' he said. ``Good thing we hid it because it was dead as a doornail.''

Bob Schindler recalled the time his eldest daughter bought a live Christmas tree, only to discover it was wickedly crooked once she got it home.

``I told her to take it back to where she bought it and have them put it in the tree straightener,'' he chuckled. ``They eventually gave her a new tree.''

She Always Saw The Good

Bob Schindler frequently had fun at the expense of his daughter's doe-eyed naivete, said Diane Meyer, Terri's best friend throughout childhood.

Terri was a good person who did good things for others and never suspected anyone of being capable of anything else, Meyer said.

``She never had a bad word for anyone, never an unkind word,'' Meyer said. ``She is one of the people you meet and you feel lucky. ... She had the kind of life that affected everybody she knew.''

Meyer said her father and Bob Schindler were best friends in high school, so the families were close.

At one time, the Schindlers and the Meyers both lived on Bloomfield Avenue in northeast Philadelphia. Later, when Bob Schindler's business took off, the family moved to Red Wing Lane in the upscale suburb of Huntington Valley northeast of the city.

Every summer, all the kids would get two vacations ``down the shore'' in New Jersey, Meyer said: once at the Schindlers' place in Stone Harbor and once at the Meyers' beach house in Cape May.

She and Terri loved to watch children's movies such as Disney's ``Bambi'' and ``Pinocchio,'' anything with animals, Meyer said.

``As teens we used to try to hijack a kid to go to Disney movies'' so they wouldn't look out of place, she said.

Terri also liked a schmaltzy romance.

``She loved the movie `Officer and a Gentleman.' She saw that movie four times the first week it came out,'' Meyer said.

Meyer also remembers the time Terri ran over an animal, only she recalls it was a rabbit and Terri was driving to the Meyers' house.

``Terri came into the house hysterically crying. It must have taken us 15 minutes to get it out of her,'' Meyer said. ``Bobby and my brother went down and hid the rabbit, and we took her down there and showed her the spot.''

`She Became Stunning'

Bob Schindler recalled his daughter never gave him any trouble while she was growing up.

She was overweight all through school and was not athletic, her father said. ``She wouldn't go to summer camp, but she wanted to go to dancing school and learn ballet,'' he said.

``I had to go to this recital, and Terri was anything but graceful,'' he said. ``I laughed so hard.''

Bob Schindler said he once stayed home sick and had the house to himself for the first time he could recall.

``I went upstairs to look around, and Bobby's room, it was a dump. Suzanne's room was normal. Terri's room was full of stuffed animals,'' he said. ``In every nook and cranny would be a stuffed animal.''

Terri lost a lot of weight during her senior year at Archbishop Wood High School, a Catholic school for girls. Meyer estimated she dropped 70 pounds from a high of about 200.

``She was always beautiful, but she became stunning,'' Meyer said. ``There was always a shy side to Terri, but she blossomed out and became more self-confident.''

After high school, Terri enrolled at Bucks County [Pa.] Community College, a commuter school where she turned heads in the black Trans Am with a golden phoenix emblem on the hood.

One of those heads was that of Michael Schiavo, a tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed sophomore from Levittown, Pa.

Schiavo was Terri's first and only boyfriend, and he proposed after they dated for about half a year.

``I sat both of them down and said: `At least wait a year. At least get your diplomas' '' from community college, Mary Schindler said. ``They insisted they were in love.''

In November 1984, the couple were married at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, where Terri had attended grammar school and worshipped throughout her childhood.

She was a month shy of her 21st birthday.

``I remember telling her she couldn't have champagne at her wedding,'' Meyer said.

At first the newlyweds lived in their own apartment. Finances soon forced them to move in with the Schindlers, where they occupied a basement room that recently had been paneled and carpeted, Bob Schindler recalled.

In early 1986, the Schiavos moved to St. Petersburg, where the Schindlers owned a vacation condominium, paying $400 a month rent to Terri's parents when they could.

Terri had worked as a clerk at a Prudential Insurance agency in Philadelphia and transfered to another Prudential agency in St. Petersburg, her father said.

However, she still hoped for a career caring for animals and talked of going to veterinary school, at one point contacting television personality Joan Embry of the San Diego Zoo for advice, Mary Schindler said.

``Embry told her to finish her education,'' Mary Schindler said.

Later in 1986, after Bob Schindler sold his business and Suzanne graduated from high school, the Schindlers carried out their original plan to retire to the St. Petersburg condominium. For a while it was crowded, Bob Schindler said.

Eventually the Schindlers rented a home where they could live while Suzanne attended St. Petersburg Junior College, and then they sold the condominium, Bob Schindler said. With the help of a loan from the Schindlers, Terri and Michael rented the apartment on Fourth Street North in St. Petersburg where they were living when Terri had heart failure leading to her severe brain damage, her father said.

Doctors think her heart failure was caused by a potassium imbalance that may have been brought on by an eating disorder.