“We’re out of our minds with grief. But at least she went to heaven, in the clouds. This kid was a fighter.

Grown men couldn’t live a day with what she had to live through every single day of her life. — Avery Saucier’s step father, Craig Scott



By ART LAWLER

Staff Writer



She never walked or talked, and spent her life completely dependent in diapers.

Avery has been the subject of controversy, mystery and numerous stories in newspapers and on television in Texas and Louisiana.

Early Sunday morning, her body was finally autopsied in Texas. (See accompanying story.)

But her step-father, Craig Scott, said last week. “She lived every day of her life in pain, She would have traded your worst day for any day she ever had.”

“She is the strongest person I’ve ever seen in my life. You look at her and realize your life is pretty damn good.”

The child has lived in recent years with her father and his wife in Metairie, Louisiana.

Scott said there’s was good medical reason for that.

The child’s medical benefits would have been lost had she moved to Texas. Plus, the child has been treated at Children’s Hospital for her yet-to-be diagnosed degenerative disease.

The family would also have had to start over with a mountain of paper work.

Jason Saucier, the child’s father, and Joy, have remained close after marrying other partners, and they’ve split time carrying for the child through the decade.

As the end drew near that night in an incredible sequence of events, Avery’s biological father, Jason, and her step father, Craig, found themselves talking to each other by cell phone as Jason and his father drove from Louisiana to Cedar Creek Lake.

As they spoke EMS workers attempted to pump new life into Avery.

Her breathing had stopped. Her heart had stopped. But EMS personnel continued desperately looking for a pulse.

While they worked, Craig asked Jason what he should do.

There was a “do-not-resuscitate order back in Louisiana, but EMS workers on Cedar Creek Lake told him they had to have proof before they could stop trying to bring Avery back.

“I don’t want her resuscitated,” Craig quotes the father as saying.

“They said they have to have proof,” Craig told the father.

Craig describes Jason as then pulling over on the highway and calling his sister. She, in turn, sent proof of the order to East Texas Medical Center Athens — all of this while paramedics continued their efforts.

Seconds later a nurse at ETMC called the EMS and ordered them to stop resuscitating the child.

And that’s the way it ended for Avery, or so the family thought.

The legal and medical maneuvering continued to keep Avery’s body in a Louisiana funeral home until this past weekend.

Meanwhile, Craig Scott’s thoughts were beginning to return to the little girl who always had a smile for everyone.

“She was a beautiful little girl,” he said. His voice filling with pride and emotion, Craig talked about the year’s of suffering and sacrifice his wife and families from both states had made for Avery.

“In 10 years, that child never had a single case of diaper rash,” he said. “It just shows how well she (his wife) took care of her.”

Some of the controversy might have been averted, according to some legal officials, had the child’s parent’s not appeared so anxious to have the child cremated.

From the first night, when family members told Blaylock there would be no need for an autopsy; to the promise to provide medical records in two days, which they failed to do so; to the JP’s concern over a body being transferred across state lines without his signature on a death certificate, the questions stalled this case and prolonged the family’s suffering.

Scott was asked about euthanasia (mercy killing)? After all, demands on the parent’s time, and the constant pain the child was experiencing every single day, could take a toll after a decade.

Scott seemed only mildly disturbed by the question. Scott said “Look, if we had wanted to do something , we could have done it a long time ago,’ he said.

In total contrast from Avery’s life, he said it’s her death without closure for all these weeks, that has broken the families hearts.

“This has destroyed my family in Louisiana, destroyed my wife in Texas,” he said. “We came here after Hurricane Katrina,” We’re not unfamiliar with devastation. But this was more devastation than Katrina to us.”

Craig Scott is the owner of an insurance adjustment company.

“My wife stays at home,” he said. “She has five children to raise, one of whom is autistic.

After pausing a moment, he corrected himself, the way families always do after the loss of a loved one.

“Now it’s four,” he said,